


The Man in the Glass

by Peapods



Series: 008 [2]
Category: James Bond (Movies), Pundit RPF
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-26
Updated: 2010-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:06:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nightmare isn't over and things just don't work out that easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Did You Have to Be So Good?

**Author's Note:**

> Repeat readers: apparently Chapter 4 has been hanging out in the prologue. I apologize, I did not even notice. The text that appears now is the ACTUAL prologue and probably makes a boatload more sense now. This is what happens when you drunk-post, kids.

Here was the truth about Double-O agents: they were just _that_ much better than everyone else. And it scared Keith. It scared him badly.

Anderson's hands were steady, his fingers nimble, his gaze unwavering as he stripped his guns, cleaning and inspecting them. He had been doing it in private, away from Keith's curious eyes, until Keith had told him to stop hiding that part of himself. But the ritual, normal for before or after a mission, made him anxious in ways he couldn't quite describe.

"It's a little ridiculous that you won't tell me what you're up to when your program is telling me you're going to be reporting from South America all next week."

"Keith," Anderson said, his voice full of warning. "You know exactly why I can't tell you. Yes, I will be in South America; no, you cannot know why."

Keith narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Do _you_ even know why?" It made Anderson laugh, head thrown back, but his fingers never faltered for a second as he set this gun aside and grabbed another. His pale hands, large as Keith's and more capable, cradled the metal, and Keith knew that afterward, despite not firing it, his lover would smell of gunpowder. Even after a shower and imprinting his own scent on his lover, the odor would remain.

He had come to associate the smell with Anderson. Before, Anderson had always made him think of salt water and green things, but now that smell was overpowered by the very idea of death, by a scent like burning hair and metal. Most days Keith could convince himself to forget. Anderson went about his normal job, reporting the news, laughing with Erica, acting concerned about things he could care less about and becoming genuinely engaged in the issues he did. But then Keith would catch some expression, some gesture that would remind him. He'd finger the fine material of a three piece suit Anderson would never wear on television or find unused hair dying kits under the sink when he was looking for razors, and those things would remind him.

Keith had handled those guns -- had wrapped clumsy digits around hard, cold pieces, and tried to imagine what it was like to take a human life. But in the end he was left confused, frightened and a little awed.

He thinks Anderson uses these quiet, repetitive moments as therapy. He gets lost, eyes losing their laser-sharp focus, sometimes grabbing things only by feeling. He can do it blindfolded, handcuffed, and severely injured. At least, this is what Keith assumes.

"Will you at least have back-up?" Keith asked.

Anderson gave him a pointed look. "The point of being a Double-O is working alone, Keith. My first mission was high profile. James' presence was the anomaly, not the norm."

"I just hate the thought of you without back-up," Keith muttered. Hated it with a fiery, fiery passion.

"I'm rarely alone," Anderson told him, giving a little nod towards his other phone. Each Double-O had been given a Blackberry capable of everything except, according to Villiers, producing a decent cup of tea. They were loaded up with encryptions that would have made the Secret Service positively weep.

"It's not the same. No one's watching your back."

"Getting this promotion meant that I don't _need_ anyone to watch my back." It was a refrain he'd heard more than once. But having nursed him through the aftermath of his first mission, Keith found it hard to believe.

But there was very little he could do about it without losing Anderson. And that was something he was becoming increasingly reluctant to do.


	2. A Door Left Open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things just won't. Go. Away.

His mission in South America was a simple one. An agent in Chile had been double-crossing them, and Anderson was to eliminate her. With a patience that would make many a predator envious, he watched her and waited. He did stories and reported live, and all the while, one sense was always focused on the movement of his soon-to-be-former coworker.

His cover, or what he reported to CNN rather than M, was the proliferation of certain drugs in the region, including designers, prescriptions, LSD, and opium. A new young, rich population consumed these drugs with a voracity that rivaled most Western countries. On the condition of anonymity he sat down with dealers and users alike, hearing narratives similar to those found in the U.S. and elsewhere.

"Since American forces abandoned Afghanistan the opium trade has only grown stronger," one informant told him. They sat in a plain hotel room, harsh lights illuminating every stain and speck of dirt. "There is a chain of command and a chain of commerce. My boss is a very dangerous man, his fingers in many pies. Osama bin Laden and he were very close and after he was killed, my boss lost a very lucrative deal. Poppies and employees."

Anderson felt his breath catch but didn't let it show on his face, only nodded to show he was listening.

"We've learned that the man bin Laden had entrusted with this side business has been killed as well. My boss, he has not been a very happy man since then. The opium flowing through his hands has been diminished of late."

Anderson ended the interview as quickly as possible and sent the man on his way, carefully memorizing the man's face. Doing his job even as his mind was lost in memories best left forgotten.

_"Please! Please don't--" he stammered, tripping on his begging words, on his fear, his agony._

_"And here I was wondering whether I would ever get you to beg, little one," Rush said softly in his ear. The mallet came crashing down again and even as Anderson screamed, he choked on it, the pain so acute that he blacked out for a moment. But then he was being slapped again, brought back to the present and Rush's sadistic smile once more._

_"Now, there are ten fingers here. I think I will break each one individually, what do you think?" Rush asked, rubbing one finger down the back of Anderson's hand and making him bite his lip as splintering pain shot up his nerve endings._

_"No, please, please," Anderson begged, so out of his mind from the pain and the hangover from the drug cocktail that even though he knew he was giving Rush what he wanted, he couldn't seem to stop himself. His usual cool composure, his array of clever comebacks in the face of danger, were all long gone._

_"No, no, I think that would be an excellent idea," Rush continued. "And then, once you have fully experienced it--maybe we give you a few hours off--I will cut off each and every one of them. You may be asking yourself what a camp full of soldiers surrounded by rocks would be doing with pruning shears, but then you would have forgotten our little side business." One of his fingers was grasped by strong hands and a moment later, the bones in his little finger were cracked. Anderson screamed._

_"The smallest finger is the easiest, you know. So delicate, used for very little. The others," he grinned, "will not go so easily, eh?"_

_The ring finger was next, and Anderson clenched his fist, hopelessly trying to stop what was about to happen._

_"FUCK!" he screamed when it snapped. Rush laughed at him, so hard in fact that he doubled over._

_"Such _foul_ language from one who begs so prettily, " he said when he had recovered. But Anderson was weeping, tossing his head back and forth. There was no more heroin in his blood to keep him aware of all the pains in his body, but at this point he hardly needed it._

_"Please, please, please," he whispered. Whether he was begging for death or for mercy, he didn't know. At this point, the two were equal in his mind._

_"No, I don't think we're _quite_ done yet," Rush said, grabbing the index finger and snapping it ruthlessly, with so much force that the knuckles dislocated._

_"Oh, _God_, please stop, please . . ." he cried, incoherent, his mind and body lost to everything but pain and the man who was inflicting it._

_"Maybe if you tell me something I would like to hear? Do you have name, perhaps? Colleagues?" Rush asked, looking all the world like he was interviewing Anderson for a job. But Anderson couldn't say anything. Would not dare open his mouth to the secrets his body begged him to spill--_

"Anderson?" He shook his head and focused on the questioning query from Neil. "Did you want to get some exterior shots?"

"Oh, um, maybe a few of the clubs and such, but nothing too irrelevant," he told his cameraman.

He left them there, took to the street, his _other_ Blackberry burning a hole in his pocket as he thought about the information he'd just received. How was he going to get information without giving away who he was? Without giving away why is was so damn important for him to have it?

And then he remembered his original objective. With little thought he called the number of Natalie Quinn.

"Quinn," she answered succinctly.

"You've a new assignment," Anderson said in a British accent. "Code word, 'pelican'."

"A Double-O, hmm? All right, my mission?"

"To make contact with the higher up in South American drug imports, name Leandro Alvaros. We want information about _his_ boss, name unknown. Connected with the kill of Osama bin Laden."

"Right-o," she acknowledged. "I've some friends who will come in handy here. Just a name?"

"And whatever else you learn," Anderson said sharply. "Send me the information once you have it."

He ended the call abruptly, staring out onto bustling streets, unable to track the directions of his thoughts.

*****

It was the fall of 2009, and the only things people cared about were money, money, and money. The economy hadn't bounced back, but it hadn't gotten much worse, so people called it a win. Anderson had covered the economy, business, indictments, legislation, agencies, and 'what this means to you' until he was blue in the face. He had set aside much of his passion-- the stories of poor people in poor places that had little more to do with ordinary Americans than a few shared genes thousands of years ago--and had submitted to the will of his bosses. The need to focus on his rehabilitation helped curb some of his restlessness, but MI-6 had only waited as long as June before sending him on another mission. A clean kill, much like the mission he was supposedly carrying out in Santiago, Chile.

Threats persisted, and the Taliban continued to trouble the United States, but Anderson was troubled by things far more personal -- by an anger he thought had been washed away with the New Year.

He took a large gulp of his drink, ordered while Charlie had been away from the table. To him it would look like regular Coke. The sharp bite of the whiskey would belie that impression.

The case hadn't been dropped completely. Anderson's debriefing, clouded by painkillers and suspect to begin with, given his state at the time of his torture, had resulted in little follow-up. Bond had been assigned to do the work and had found little left for them to deal with. They had never found anything that would lead them to the upper echelons of the opium ring or whoever it was Rush had talked about that night. It was as though, with Rush's death--his well-deserved murder--every chance of eliminating the Taliban's cash cow had gone with him.

Until two days ago.

He had continued his surveillance on Quinn, watched her meet with Alvaros, watched them cautiously circle each other. He hadn't bugged her and he rarely followed her, but at most times he could track her exact movements anyway. Again, his Blackberry was equipped with things the Secret Service would kill for.

Said device dinged, and he knew that the information had been obtained and relayed. He skimmed it briefly before saving it and throwing a little cash on the table. As Charlie came back he rose and made apologies, claiming exhaustion. He went to his room. An hour later, with Quinn in her usual location for this time of night, he dressed in slim black pants and a sleeveless black shirt.

Tantra was a night club that Anderson generally wouldn't set foot in. Too trendy, too hot, too many colored lights. Inside, a smile and a flash of glittered green eyes got him past the doorman; he quickly took a shot as they shook his martini. The crowd was young, far younger than Anderson's forty-two years, but he knew his body was in the best shape it had ever been, much better than the chubby bellies and flabby arms he saw swinging around the crowded dance floor. And with his trademark white hair dyed to a rich chestnut he knew that he looked even younger. It wasn't a matter of vanity, it was simply the skill of an agent. Fully prepared to enter any situation.

He tossed back his martini nearly as fast as he had his shot and girded himself to go out on the dance floor. The dance floor that looked more like a discotheque than a modern night club. Stepping out, he was immediately surrounded by men and women who had been dancing alone, looking for a hot partner. Anderson smiled wolfishly at each one, letting one young man grind against his ass and a young woman run sharp lacquered nails down his chest to the seam of his crotch. Finally, he settled on a blonde woman, not particularly young or old, not particularly prettier than the other women in the club, but with such sensuality curving around her swaying hips and peach-plump lips that she easily outshone the barbie dolls and goth queens. They pressed together, falling into a rhythm far more suited to the bedroom than the dance floor, and Anderson let himself feel, let himself become someone else. It was an easy transformation.

"You dance all right," she said huskily into his ear with a greatly exaggerated Southern accent. "I haven't seen you around before."

"Only got into town today," Anderson told her, deepening his voice, letting it soften into a passable Spanish accent. She didn't notice.

"Don't suppose you're interested in more than just dancing?"

"You know a place?"

She took his hand and danced her way off the floor, red strappy heels catching the lights, and he let himself smirk as she led him into a concealed back alley.

"Hope you're not afraid of the great outdoors," she said, leaning against the wall.

"I prefer it," Anderson said, moving close. He kissed her, part of him recoiling at the taste of her lip balm, even as another, the fake part, reveled in it. He didn't waste time, pushing her shirt into her armpits, licked and sucked at dark nipples as his hands pushed her skirt up around her hips. No underwear impeded him as he lapped at her opening. She was wet and salty and he closed his eyes. He grabbed at his boot, stood and quickly slipped a knife up and under her sternum, piercing her heart.

She only had time to gasp, readying a scream, before he kissed her hard, held her against him. She sagged. He lifted her into his arms and dumped her easily into a nearby dumpster. He wiped the knife and slipped it back into his ankle holster. He exited the alley onto the street and caught a cab to Bunker Discotheque.

He needed a drink. And maybe a cock to get the taste of pussy out of his mouth.

*****

"Target eliminated?" M asked, voice crisp.

"Yes. I've transferred what information I was able to gather before the kill. Small potatoes things. Hardly worth her working so hard for another side," Anderson told her as he packed his gear.

"Excellent. We'll debrief via conference call tomorrow." With that she hung up. Anderson felt bad about lying for the shortest second before shrugging it off. He tossed his ragged backpack over one shoulder and grabbed his duffel. Outside his room, Charlie, Neil, and Marianne waited, all looking very put-upon.

"You all plan this sort of thing, don't you?" he asked good-naturedly before leading the way down the hall.

"Well, since you refuse to act like a fussy prima-donna, we have to get our kicks somehow," Marianne told him.

"I swear, next time, I'll take an hour-long shower and make you all wait while I demand seltzer water to shave with."

*****

Unlike Jon, Anderson had never suffered insomnia. At least, he didn't think of it in that way. He needed very little sleep to be functional--as much a product of his age and physical character as his training--and often found himself up hours before Keith. He usually spent that time writing for the show, doing research, and occasionally standing on his balcony watching the city wake up. Not that New York really slept that much. He snorted to himself -- not unlike Anderson himself in that respect.

Three mornings after returning from Santiago, he rolled out of bed, laying a gentle, dry kiss on Keith's cheek as he did. He pulled on his boxers and a t-shirt before going out into the kitchen, the click of Molly's nails following him. He grabbed his Blackberry and docked it into his computer, turning the machine on. He got a Coke from the refrigerator and slipped a mini-bagel into the toaster oven before returning to the table. As the Blackberry icon popped up--there was no web equivalent for the emails that came into this particular device--he clicked it and pulled up the information Natalie Quinn had sent him the night he had killed her.

_Alvaros had contact with a man who only went by the name of Shakespeare. Quite lofty of him, hmm? They have face to face meetings once a month in Montserrat, a standing appointment at the villa 'Camelot by the Sea.' The next meeting will be September 24th._

Perhaps it wasn't the height of wisdom, taking information from a confirmed dirty agent, but Anderson was fairly certain the information was accurate. Only the ballsiest lied to Double-Os, and given the small magnitude of her betrayal he doubted she was one of them.

September the twenty-fourth was only two weeks away, and Anderson was unsure how he would get away from work. He told himself he wouldn't necessarily be going rogue, only following up on a previous case. Without permission. He shrugged it off and closed the window, opening up a travel site and quickly finding a flight on the twentieth that would eventually land in Montserrat. He sighed and rolled his eyes -- now, to deal with the CNN people. He could take vacation, devise another bogus story idea, or simply call in sick. It was not a problem he could solve at 5:45 in the morning. He decided to get the newspapers instead.

His bagel dinged and he fumbled the hot pastry out onto the counter, flipping on the coffeemaker and waiting for Keith's alarm to go off. Six a.m. was about all Keith would cop to these days, giving them three or four hours to spend together before they were off to their respective studios. As he finished one half of his bagel, Keith shuffled in, yawning and scratching at his much slimmer belly. He didn't say a word to Anderson as he got out a coffee cup and poured from the still-dripping pot. He sucked down half of it before refilling the cup and getting out the cream and sugar.

"Good morning," Anderson finally said.

"Morning," Keith grunted. Coffee fixed and bagel finished they went into the living room, settling in to get the news of the morning.

As Anderson calmly perused the _Washington Post_, Keith huffed his way through the _Wall Street Journal_.

"Do you want to me to just cancel my subscription?" Anderson asked, as he had many other such mornings.

"No," Keith said, sullenly.

"It only gets you worked up."

"I like getting worked up."

It was easy, repetitive morning conversation, the opening salvos designed to get Keith's brain moving. Anderson quite enjoyed it.

"The _Post_ is reporting NewsCorp's stock is down again," Anderson told him slyly. It brought a self-satisfied grin to Keith's face, one that only needed yellow feathers to make the picture complete.

"And CNN?" Keith asked. Anderson raised his eyebrow with a smile. Quite feisty for morning-Keith.

"Doing quite well, thank you," Anderson answered primly. Following some fairly disastrous programming decisions on Jon Klein's part, the CNN president had been fired and replaced with a much more deserving internal producer who had quickly returned CNN to the formats that worked for them. Moreover, this president was far more attuned to Anderson and the kind of reporting he wanted to do, versus what he was forced to do. Though he wasn't traveling as much as he'd like yet things were mostly back on track. It drove Keith absolutely bonkers when their ratings bounced back and took a firm number one at ten. Greta von Susteren had been positively apoplectic. Anderson had been oblivious.

"Rachel's still beating Larry," Keith threw back.

"As well she should. She's smart, has more interesting guests, and, much as I love him, would never get Ryan Seacrest as a guest host."

He loved the clouded look that took over Keith's face when he mentioned Ryan Seacrest's--something he mostly did just to get that look.

"Still beating Campbell Brown," he grumbled.

"Yes, you are, although that's mostly because people still don't know who she is," Anderson said.

"You're just saying that to get my back up."

"Mostly," he admitted. "She's smart, but she's not you."

Keith looked horribly pleased with himself, and Anderson had to laugh as he leaned over to kiss his grizzled cheek. They passed the morning together, talking and kissing, and Anderson didn't mention his less than impromptu trip to Montserrat.

Discussions about Anderson's other job were firmly left to the evening hours.

*****

He decided not to tell Keith about his "mission" until they were in relatively neutral company. Meaning Rachel was there.

Given the fact that they were the only two people in the world, outside the agency, who knew who and what Anderson was, he was unsurprised when, more often than not, they found each other gravitating together more and more. The lack of need to censor themselves consequently brought Anderson and Keith closer together. It was like therapy, almost. A third-party to their relationship who could be relatively objective on any given subject.

"Can you tell us how many Double-O's there are?" she asked. They had gotten together for dinner at her new place five days before Anderson had scheduled himself to leave.

"I can tell you there aren't many," he said, skirting the question. "We tend to be very expensive to have around. Not only because of the nature of our missions, but because you would have to retrain a group of nearly a hundred just to find one candidate for Double-O status."

"Jeez," she remarked.

"You can imagine, with the kinds of things we have to do, that not many are cut out for the job."

"But you are," Rachel said, sending him a look like she was trying to figure him out. He met her gaze steadily.

"I've got a new mission," he announced, wincing at his awkwardness.

"Wait, when did this happen?" Keith asked.

"Today," Anderson said shortly. "I leave the 20th. Beyond that I can't say much."

"Not even where you're going?"

"That information's too sensitive," Anderson prevaricated. Keith was staring at him with narrowed eyes, and Anderson wondered whether he had caught on to Anderson's particular method of avoiding a fight. Anderson ignored his gaze and instead poured everyone another glass of wine.

"Has anyone seen that new video with the dog and the trumpet?"

*****

Landing at Gerald's airport, Anderson braced himself for the oppressive Caribbean heat. He was pleasantly surprised by the breeze that hit him instead. He adjusted his baseball cap and shrugged on a light jacket. The rounded glasses he wore covered brown eyes, and the guitar case he carried gave him the appearance of a musician on holiday, looking to take advantage of the long(ish) musical history of the island. Truly, the case held all sorts of paraphernalia that would be of use in Anderson's pursuit of information.

He checked into a fairly low-end hotel more worthy of his time as a Channel One reporter than his time as a Double-O agent. He had four days to prepare, though much of this first day was already lost. He changed into ripped jeans and a t-shirt before heading out into the sunset. Bars were open and people were spilling out into the street, not high class types in Feragamos and de la Renta, but musicians like his cover--a disposable income, spent on purposefully looking like trash.

He took a quick ride up to the villa that the men would be using for their meeting, 35mm camera in hand. He looked every inch the tourist as he snapped "artistic" portraits of the estate. A short footpath led down to the beach and other paths led into the wilderness surrounding the house. There were no lights on in the house, no hum of electricity. Anderson padded closer and navigated his way around until he found a patch of grass that led to a staircase. The doors entering the house were easily opened, and he entered cautiously, listening for any sound; but in the absence of electricity the house was eerily silent, only the wind whistling through the windows. He padded around, carefully noting nooks and crannies, wondering whether a bug would be enough, wondering whether that house would be swept in the meantime. He would have to risk it.

A bug in every room and a few in the outer deck areas and he was ready to leave. He would need to be close by regardless, but hopefully not as close as he would need to be if the bugs were found.

He took the footpath down to the beach, noting coves and foliage that could hide him if need be. He considered how he would get to the villa. It might be possible to take a boat to this beach, but every entryway to the villa would likely be watched. He surveyed the property from various vantage points. At the very least he could get a visual on the man, which frankly might be all he needed.

He spent the next day playing the tourist, filming little reporter's notebooks about the local economy and the volcano that continued to erupt even as late as December 2008. He could, at the very least, use them in a _60 Minutes_ piece. He carefully kept himself out of the shots. He fell in with students and musicians, drinking and having fun, blending in so well that before long he had people calling his cell, asking him to meet them at a club or wherever. It turned out to be a very lucrative association.

"Yeah, I make money getting hired out to different villas. They close them up when no one is there," said one muscled young man that Anderson had fairly draped himself in the lap of, one tanned hand attached to his ass.

"What do you usually do?"

The boy shrugged. "Make drinks, work by the pools, stupid shit like that. I'll be little more than glorified man candy tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Anderson asked, curious.

"At the Camelot by the Sea? It's this villa up on the cliffs. Work there once a month, same bunch of people."

"How much do you make?"

"It's a good day's work. About ten dollars an hour, plus tips," he said with a shark's grin.

"'Tips'?" Anderson asked.

"I can get up to five thousand."

"Five thousand, huh? That could finance me another whole week," Anderson cooed, slipping a hand towards the boy's crotch. His hips lifted into Anderson's caressing hand.

"I tell you what. Go on Thursday. They provide outfits," the boy said, with an air that suggested he was doing Anderson a very great favor--which he was, though it was not the favor he thought.

"Thanks, babe," he whispered. "What say you and I go back to your place?"

*****

One roofied muscle man later, Anderson was sunless tanning in his hotel bathroom. He didn't go too dark, only enough that his tan would shine, not make him like a Christmas goose, and so he wouldn't look like he'd never seen a sunny day in his life. He touched up his hair with blonde highlights and practiced tousling it _just so_.

The next morning he woke early and packed his things. He sent his luggage ahead to the airport and took a scooter up the cliff to Camelot by the Sea. He was stopped almost immediately.

"What do you want?" a surly man asked, and Anderson noticed a very large gun propped against a nearby tree.

"Here to work," Anderson said, "in place of Jamie Montez. He's ill."

The man looked at his list before nodding him through. Anderson let himself smirk, and he wound down the paths to the car park. Inside, he saw two other young men and a few young women. He was obviously the oldest among them, but with a smooth smile he assured them that he was the best.

"Right, your outfits are in the second bedroom. Be ready in fifteen minutes or leave."

The outfit, though it could hardly be called that, thankfully covered his legs and their scars, but was so thin that it left little else to the imagination. They sat right on top of his ass, making it look slightly more swelled than it usually did. He borrowed a young woman's eyeliner to make his eyes stand out more now that their blue color was covered in brown.

In the kitchen they were handed trays and told "you know what to do." Well, Anderson could guess. There weren't many of them--the man from Chile, who only glanced at him once before giving his drink order, glued his eyes to a young woman in a double-d. All of them were Anderson's age or older, but well taken care of: tanned, dyed, and better dressed than even Anderson usually was. He wondered which imagined himself as "Shakespeare."

"Hmm, you're something new," a refined British voice said. This man was not so young and probably looked every year his age. Anderson gave him a smile.

"What can I get for you, sir?"

"Dry martini, darling, and perhaps a phone number?"

Anderson only winked. "Perhaps."

He took a few more orders, retrieved the drinks, adding another wink when he delivered to the old British man, and started to retreat back to the kitchen with his compatriots. A hand on his arm stopped him.

"Stay here with me, darling," the man said.

"I'm not certain I should," Anderson demurred, looking around at the gathering. The few looking at them were laughing, but didn't seem to have any objection to Anderson's presence. Anderson smiled and sat himself next to the man even as the old bugger dragged his chair, one handed, to his side.

"Don't worry, so long as you promise not to repeat what you hear," the man said in a puerile voice, assuming that a pool boy wouldn't have a brain cell to spare on his tone.

"Well, then I'd be glad to," Anderson said, dragging a lazy finger down the man's arm.

Anderson was accustomed to playing parts. He had to be what people expected of him. He put on the outfit. He affected the accent. He dyed the hair. He stuck contacts in his eyes. He simpered or he slinked. He smiled or he scowled. He showed the world the face they wanted to see. It was hard for Rachel and Keith to understand, they who could never be anyone except who they were, as though the manipulations Anderson found to be first nature would mean losing themselves, compromising themselves. But Anderson, more a consequence of his mother than his time as an agent, knew that people were going to make judgments, create personas, build whole characters based on nothing but a whim and a few paltry words, if even that much. So, why not play with them? His mother had shown him the way; MI-6 had given him the tools.

"Bolivia has been remarkably cooperative given the debacle with Greene," Alvaros started out without any preamble.

"No, they wouldn't give us much fuss. The real truth about Greene is only one story among many about that situation," another man said. He was a head taller than anyone there, maybe even taller than Keith, with a thick head of blonde hair. "No, Bolivia is not our concern. Our new HIV drugs are a hit in the Western nations and it's time to move on."

"What are our demands?" the British man asked.

"Access, of course." The man shrugged. "Our manufacturers in India, South Africa, and Brazil have shipments ready to go as soon as they agree to our demands. One of our NGOs," he nodded to another man who raised his drink in acknowledgment, "is ready to put in the infrastructure for blood testing. Greene Planet is ready to do sanitation and hygiene. Ivory Coast is most keen and the others will follow suit shortly, I'm sure."

"And what about our... other pursuits?" another man asked, directing his question to Alvaros.

"The minor setback in supply we suffered in December hasn't been entirely corrected, but it is rising steadily. We lost two very valuable resources in that snafu," he told them, unnecessarily, Anderson thought. He let himself feel a small thrill of satisfaction, but kept his gaze semi-fixed on the British... patron. He smiled when the man briefly turned to him and settled back, making sure his pants pulled tight in all the right places. The man's eyes went exactly where they were supposed to, and Anderson kept his ear focused as he caressed the man's arm more firmly.

"Mmmm, a massage would be lovely, darling," the man said, and Anderson took the hint, standing and moving behind his chair. They didn't exactly teach sensual massage at MI-6, but not all of Anderson's skills were purely for business.

"I dislike these kinds of delays and I powerfully dislike losing my money." The blond man's voice turned cold as ice. "Has there been any advancement in terms of reprisal?"

"Whoever it was is highly protected and very good at their job. Any informant we might've had was killed or arrested," a young man, possibly Pakistani, admitted. "That British agent is a highly probable suspect, but Mr. White has instructed us not to go after him."

"Why, White?" the blond man said to the man whose shoulders Anderson's hands were wrapped around.

"Mr. Bond is more valuable to us alive. He fumbles and stumbles into our dealings but is ultimately a mosquito, buzzing at your face, occasionally stinging you." Anderson's heart didn't quite stutter in his chest, though his hands never faltered. Bond was connected with this somehow, and Anderson was utterly ignorant about who these men were.

"Mosquitos, Mr. White, can carry diseases far more insidious than itchy saliva."

"Even with our inside man and the information he carries there is very little he can do to us. And if he manages it, we will simply eliminate him," White said, his tone indicating that the subject was closed.

The conversation split into groups then, and though Anderson desperately wanted to hear what these men were saying, Mr. White was monopolizing all his attention. His hands wandered, and Anderson closed his eyes and swallowed before allowing his body to react. White chuckled and pulled Anderson into his lap. Anderson straddled him, smiling, before leaning in to kiss him. All his arts of seduction had to go into the performance even as his conscience--hadn't he gotten rid of that pesky thing?--reminded him of Keith.

"Oh, my little darling, how I'd love to get a proper shot at you." The man leered lecherously. "So very pretty."

"So, why don't you take it?" Anderson asked, putting on a little pout, letting a mercenary gleam come through.

The old man laughed. "I won't be here long enough to do all I want to do to you. Look at you, dressing up in woman's makeup, pouting so perfectly at me. No, I'm afraid I have more self-control than a little whore like you would ever know." With that he stood, making Anderson stumble to standing. He smiled again. "But it is very, _very_ tempting."

As the man walked away, Anderson's forced erection immediately wilted and though his face didn't go entirely blank, he lost much of the flirtation he'd affected for the past hour. Instead he put on a face of polite interest and went around to inquire about more drinks. But as he reached each clump, he was disappointed to find that their conversations had turned to innocuous, inane chatter. He served lunch with the others and he served more drinks, but no other information slipped past their lips.

But what he had learned started to put the world in a whole new perspective.

One he didn't quite care for.


	3. Don't Think of the Danger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anderson doesn't always think things through. This can be a bad and a good thing.

Waiting at the airport, he called Keith. He rubbed his nose and eyes, grimacing when his hand came away with black lines smeared across the fingers. He rubbed more viciously to get rid of all the eyeliner. The make-up stung his eyes a little, and he used the moisture to rub away the black.

"Done?" Keith asked when he came on the line.

"Um, maybe," Anderson mumbled. "Maybe not. Kind of up in the air right now."

"Are you okay?" Keith's concern both warmed him and left him feeling like a sleaze for lying to him.

"I'm okay, just a little tired. Kind of a distasteful mission." Keith never asked about the "distasteful" ones.

"All right, well, I hope you come home soon. The CNN people are getting restless," Keith joked. Anderson gave it the laugh it deserved, though he didn't feel it, and made his goodbyes.

His stop-over was in Port Au Prince, oddly enough, and he sighed when he noticed that his flight to Charlotte had been delayed. He settled into the airport bar and drank neat whiskey as he watched businessmen and travelers pace the terminal looking harried at the late hour. He didn't know what to do with the information he'd been given. His best bet would be to report back to MI-6, see what they knew. That was something Anderson was loathe to do since he'd likely be chewed out -- the information would be called into question given how he'd obtained it. Dead, double-crossing agents were hardly the best character witnesses when it came to information validity. But that Bond was somehow connected to this case was encouraging. His uncertain musings were interrupted by the most unlikely sight.

The blonde man from the meeting was striding down the carpet, bodyguards in tow. Without a second thought Anderson threw some bills on the bar and took off after him. He kept his pace deliberately casual, assuming the blank look of the tired traveler. The man approached a gate and Anderson quickly scanned the flight information. All flights out of this gate passed through Miami International and connected to various parts of Europe. Anderson would have no way to know which ticket to buy unless he could get a look at their tickets. He glanced around the airport and did some quick thinking. He could simply catch the next flight to Miami and watch to see what flight the men connected on. It seemed it was going to be the only option.

Except... One of the flight attendants, who had been gathered by the gate, ready to board the next flight, was moving off toward the bathroom. Anderson smiled to himself. It had been a very long time since he'd had sex in a bathroom.

A public one, anyway.

In the bathroom he caught the eye of the attendant as they did their business. The man blushed, obviously interested. Anderson finished first, but left his pants undone, walking over and locking the bathroom door. He certainly didn't need some kind of bastardized Larry Craig moment at a time like this. When he turned back the man was pumping an already full erection, leaning against the wall. Anderson stalked up to him and kissed him hard, his tongue a hard point, jabbing in and out.

"Oh, fuck, suck me," the man moaned when Anderson pulled away. Anderson dropped to his knees and sucked him down in one go. He wasn't large, wasn't particularly fresh either, but Anderson just kept sucking, giving him the benefit of his many years of practice. He came disgustingly easily and Anderson turned to spit into the urinal before standing.

"Can I help you out?"

"Mm, maybe you can tell me what flight you're going to be on after Miami," Anderson said huskily.

"Salzburg, but I have the turn around."

"That's... unfortunate," Anderson said, pouting.

"It's these guys," the attendant said with a roll of his eyes. "They insist on no staff changing during the journey. Paranoid, I guess."

"Powerful people," Anderson commented innocuously. "Anyway, maybe I'll see you. We could, uh, take your break together."

The man smiled; he really was quite good looking, "I look forward to it."

The ticket counter had one final spot on the Miami-Salzburg plane, and Anderson got them to switch his luggage easily. Two hours later he was sitting in business class wondering why a CEO of a major drug company spent his time flying around on a commercial jet.

*****

Anderson would have thought that one of the heads of some kind of global organization on a mission to rake in all the cash and power they could would have a more interesting life. His serendipitous target had arrived in Salzburg and gone straight to a gorgeous villa on the river. Anderson had rented a car, a sleek Aston Martin quite amusingly called "Vanquish", and taken off after the Bentley that led him deep into the countryside. The villa had a long private drive, and when he lost sight of the vehicle, Anderson pulled over into a convenient restaurant and got a table, pulling out his Blackberry. He activated the GPS and made sure the car that had taken the man to his villa hadn't left.

He called Keith. "I'm going to be a little longer. I'm following something up."

"What is so damn important?" Keith asked, and Anderson could hear the strain in his voice.

"Something more important than a mild flu bug."

"Or the new Supreme Court Justice? Or lack thereof?"

"Small potatoes," Anderson told him, grinning. He heard Keith huff out a laugh.

"Well, I guess you're saving the world then. All right, just let me know when you're on your way home so I can kick out the male prostitute I've had servicing me," he said, voice heavy with sarcasm.

Anderson laughed. "I will." His laughter abruptly ceased as he saw one of the bodyguards from the airport enter the restaurant. "I gotta go, love you." He hung up without waiting for Keith's response. The man appeared to be ordering food at the bar. Anderson let himself smile.

He was tall and bald, possibly Latino -- which, before Keith, would have had Anderson passing this man a number. He wore black clothes that hugged every muscular curve, of which he had quite a few. He was flirting heavily with the bartender though, tapping her hand and smiling a smile that Anderson recognized, having used it himself many times.

The bodyguard waited about twenty minutes before his food was delivered, and Anderson had been able to finish his own lunch in the meantime. He stood as the other man did, and as he passed by, ostensibly on his way to the bathroom, he stumbled into the man and dropped a bug into his pocket even as he apologized. The other man waved him off and left. Anderson used the facilities before popping in a small earpiece. He paid and jumped in his car, turning back towards the villa and the small public park he'd seen neighboring it. Families and screaming children ran around him as he settled onto a bench beside the river. Yachts and small boats slid smoothly across the water, and Anderson let himself sink into a half-conscious state as voices sounded in his ear.

"_Oh, wonderful, I'm famished_," and Anderson recognized the voice as the blond man's.

"_Yes, Mr. Westberg, and they had those dumplings from last time_."

"_Excellent_." There was a rustling and clinking as food was passed out. "_Any updates from our lab about the swine-flu vaccination_?"

"_The United States is still fighting us; they want regulations and they _don't_ want to make any concessions to a non-American company_," said a new voice.

"_Mexico is on board though? Along with a couple of others_?" Westberg asked.

"_Yes, quite so, and Greene Planet is ready to move into Mexico as soon as we give them the vaccine_."

"_Ah, yes, the promise of clean water and proper plumbing. Playing on fears of bad hygiene and pandemic_," Mr. Westberg said. "_It should hardly be so easy, and yet_."

The feed went silent but for the ambient noise of a meal being consumed. Anderson bent and propped his elbows on his knees, resting his chin on his folded hands. Everything around him blurred and he focused on a small sailboat on the water as he ran through the information as he understood it.

These men appeared to be part of some kind global partnership which assessed what it was a country needed and gave it to them, at the price of letting other companies set up shop there. The strategy appeared to be quite successful in those countries with the fewest resources and the most corruption. The man, Westberg, appeared to be involved heavily in drugs, both legal and illegal. This group, whatever it was, seemed ruthless. Intent only on acquiring power and money, and damn anyone who might get in the way.

Anderson had gotten in the way.

*****

What Anderson needed was information. He needed to know who these people were, who they were giving their money to, and whether or not Anderson's work from nearly a year ago had been undone.

He needed to get inside that villa.

He found a small inn a few miles down the road and then asked the desk manager where to find the local market. There he bought red hair dye, a pair of glasses with clear lenses, a glass cutter and black socks. He bought a magnetic earring for one ear and another for his nose. Everything else he needed was still in his guitar case.

At the inn he quickly used the wash for the dye already in his hair and then dyed it again with the deep red. He dressed in black, including a black cap, and put on the rings and the glasses. The world was bordered by black lines but otherwise the spectacles did not obscure his vision. And as the rest of the world turned quiet, he snuck out his ground floor window and made his way to the Vanquish.

He stowed it at the park where he'd been that afternoon, parking nearer the villa than before. He set off through the slight wood that separated the two tracts of land, his boots crunching through the undergrowth, demanding he go slow to soften the sounds.

The villa came into view, lights out in all but one or two rooms from Anderson's vantage point. He removed his boots as he hit the well-manicured grass and began scurrying towards the lit windows. Inside were the two henchman, one obviously passed out on the sofa, hand wrapped loosely around an expensive bottle of scotch, and the other watching a game of soccer--Keith could probably name the teams--like his very life depended on it. He skirted all around the house, peeking through windows, checking for more lights, but not so much as an outside security light went on as he chose his point of entry. This room was furthest from the still-awake bodyguard and was otherwise empty. Further, he didn't want to risk entering through a door given the likely presence of some kind of security measure. He pulled out the glass cutter and quietly, slowly, cut an area big enough for his hand near the window latch. Every time the glass squeaked, he winced, but the sound was likely drowned out by ambient noise, not to mention the loud soccer game. He completed the circle and tapped it at one edge so the other came towards him. He used one nail to pull it out slowly. He reached in and carefully unlocked the window, pulling it up.

The air conditioning inside was a jarring contrast with the heat that he could feel against his back. He left the window open, but as he stepped out into the hall--he'd alighted in some kind of day room--he closed the door behind him so that not even a temperature change could alert the people in the house to his presence. The hardwood floors were polished and creak-less, and his socks slipped across them noiselessly. His pants, soft cotton, didn't even swish against each other as his thighs brushed.

All the doors were open on this hall but one, which Anderson assumed was Westberg's bedroom. He ignored it in favor of what appeared to be a den. Judging by where he'd broken in, the henchmen were on the other side of the house, and Anderson couldn't even hear the soccer game. The room he entered was dominated by a desk that would have given the President a boner. It was immaculate, cleared of unnecessary knick-knacks, unadorned by the technology Anderson and others found so imperative. Anderson felt a moment of pure envy before shaking his head and closing the door, moving behind the desk and pushing away a luxurious chair.

The drawers had no locks and he slipped one open with no more than a small thump as it rocked out of t groove a little. He flipped through the folders there but nothing caught his eye. He went through everything and found nothing until, scrambling to get a stubborn paper off the bottom of the second to last drawer, the bottom moved. He smirked to himself--a false bottom? How very villainous of them--and opened another drawer to pull out the letter opener. He wedged it in and pulled up the false bottom.

"Hello," he said quietly to himself, pulling out two blue folders, thin, but obviously important. He lifted them out and placed them on the desk.

He took a deep breath and pulled out his camera. The bad thing about this instrument was that it had a direct line to MI-6, and M would know immediately who it was from and where he was. Unfortunately, it was also the only option he had if he wanted to leave the lights off and get clear pictures. He didn't waste time reading the pages, only skimming. They appeared to be signed documents, Westberg's signature and another's, different for each page, as he quickly flicked through them. His fingers were becoming clumsy though, and he absently noted the fuzzy, tired feeling that made him blink his eyes several times. He wondered for a moment what he was doing, before looking at the documents again and taking more pictures. Apparently, the election of Medvedev in Russia had been as fixed as everyone believed; his signature, followed by Vladimir Putin's, turned over control of half the country's resources to Greene Planet. He grimaced, suddenly regretting the schnitzel he'd had for dinner.

It was only when his vision began to swim, when his breath wouldn't come as easily, that he stumbled from behind the desk, not even bothering to put away the folders, his feet tripping over themselves and he went down in a sprawl.

He couldn't get back up.

*****

The world spun into view. His stomach lurched and he breathed deeply to counteract the nausea. Soon, the room he was in came stilled and came into focus. He was upright, tied to a metal chair. The room was like every interrogation room he'd seen on television.

"Good morning," a not-so-pleasant voice said pleasantly.

Anderson grunted.

"So, as I understand it, you've been spying on us for awhile now," he continued. "And if _some_ are to be believed I've gone and caught myself the man who caused me nothing but trouble by taking out Mr. bin Laden."

Anderson only looked him straight in the eye, face utterly blank. He wouldn't start to count this encounter as truly torturous until Westberg started breaking digits.

"I'm not a fan of 'enhanced interrogation' myself," Westberg said as the door opened and his bodyguards entered. "But it _is_ entertaining, isn't it?"

The two thugs were slapping tire irons against their palms like any good cartoon villain and had smirks of pure enjoyment on their faces. Anderson didn't even grimace, though he did have to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Amateurs.

"Now, then," Westberg said, taking the seat opposite him. "Let's start with your name."

Anderson didn't open his mouth. A nod from Westberg and Thug Number One, the one with the terrifyingly awful bowl cut, whacked him behind the knee. It hurt, and Anderson had to bite his tongue. But the explosive pain quickly paled in comparison with the systematic torture he'd endured the year before.

Westberg sighed. "This is why I _hate_ capturing men like you. Willing to die for your country, for what you think is _right_. No sense of self preservation." He nodded again, and Anderson's other knee was struck. He grunted a little, eyes crinkling in a wince, but otherwise didn't react.

"I've got your camera, you know, but I don't doubt you've stored some information in that martyred brain of yours."

Anderson was suddenly very, very glad that his camera was connected to MI-6. Because as much as he was not anticipating the ass-chewing he would get, the information was more important.

"For a grandmaster villain, you're pretty boring," Anderson said. And like any bad villain, that got Westberg's back up, if the clenching of his fists was any indication. He came forward with controlled movements and punched Anderson right on the nose, which thankfully did not break. His nose was prominent enough already. It also, luckily, did not dislodge the magnetic stud.

He was dragged forward, and the tire iron hit him squarely across the small of his back, bruising his kidneys. Thug Number Two joined in at this point, mostly using punches and kicks similar to those Anderson had been trained to use. It was a regular beating, not unlike what he'd gone through in some of his very early cases, and he found himself almost enjoying the memories. They were certainly more pleasant than Rush's torture.

"I'll ask again; may I please have your name?"

"You may not," Anderson answered, giving him a pleasant smile. "Any other questions?"

That earned him a stomach jab that _really_ had him regretting the schnitzel.

"And what did you learn from my study?"

"That you're over-compensating for something with that desk?"

He probably deserved the tire iron to the knees. And the kidneys. And the groin. He couldn't help the hysterical giggle though. That had been a pretty good line.

The day -- he assumed it was day -- proceeded in much the same fashion: Westberg asking questions, Anderson giving him what he thought were hilarious answers, and Anderson getting the tar beaten out of him because the other three didn't seem to agree with his opinion of his own sense of humor.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day.

*****

Thug Number One was an idiot. And had bad hair. But that was the least of his problems, the greatest of which was a too-trusting nature. Well, that probably had something to do with being an idiot. One word about needing to use the facilities and the man was taking him to the bathroom. The upstairs bathroom. It appeared Thug Number Two and Westberg had left the premises, perhaps needing a break from Anderson-bashing. His knees ached terribly, as did his face, but that hardly mattered. He knew a chance when he saw one.

Westberg had chosen the trendy plastic ties to bind his hands, and while Anderson couldn't risk trying to get out of them down in the "interrogation" room, in the pleasant and well-appointed bathroom it was a snap. Thug Number One pulled down his pants and boxer-briefs--only slightly embarrassing--and stood dutifully outside, issuing threats about not taking so long.

"Well, I'm sorry my constipation is so inconvenient to you," he called in a not entirely feigned strained voice, as he found a bit of rough metal by the claw foot tub. Still in his socks, it would be impossible for the man to hear him moving from the toilet. The metal was jagged and ripped into flesh, but he gritted his teeth and lifted until he felt it hit the plastic. He rubbed frantically, covering his grunts of frustration with grunts of another kind. God, he could rival Keith for all the drama he was making about a simple restroom break. He could feel the plastic giving, though; he could twist his wrists and moments later it was undone. He made a point not to flush the toilet, but _did_ pull up his pants.

Making a getaway in nothing but half his birthday suit was just too far beneath his dignity.

"All right, I'm done," he called. The man opened the door, but Anderson caught it and slammed it back into his face. It sprung forward as the man fell backwards, and Anderson followed it with a quick punch to the face. He grabbed the guy's shoulders and slammed his knee into the guy's groin. As he went down, a firm blow to the head knocked him into the wall and knocked Thug Number One unconscious. He breathed heavily, his own injuries complaining. He frisked the man and plucked his gun from its holster, shoving it in the back of his pants.

He ran for the French doors that were closest to the thicket through which he'd approached, only to hear the screech of tires in the private drive. He didn't waste a second and took off at a run, forgetting all about his boots. Brambles and rocks dug into his feet, but compared to having someone gouge cuts into them and then having to run, the pain was little more than a nuisance.

Shouting and ruckus alerted him that his absence had been noticed, and he double-timed it. The Aston Martin was right where he'd left it and he fumbled for the keys he'd hidden under the tire. A click of a button unlocked and started the car, and he threw himself in. He tore out of the park and down the road, headed not for his inn, but for the fucking airport.

He had barely passed the drive to the villa before another car pulled out, leaving black rubber trails as they followed him. Anderson supposed it was his "bat out of hell" driving that gave him away and slipped the car into fourth gear. The streets were mercifully fairly empty for a late afternoon, but he still had to dodge and weave around several slower drivers, eliciting honks and comments in angry German.

The sound and feel of bullets permeating the body of his car made him wince, and he shoved it into fifth, trying to go faster, trying to be better. He heard the shattering of glass and grimaced as some of it hit his bare arm. He jerked the wheel and skidded into the opposite lane, going around a giant SUV. A glance in the side mirror showed the other car doing the same, and he saw that Westberg was the one holding the gun, with Thug Number Two driving. He glanced around and saw the exit for the first bridge and yanked the wheel around, pulling onto the ramp. He skidded into the wrong lane again, just in time, too, since the other car couldn't get around the barrier. He had his gun ready as the other car pulled level, and Anderson continued to try and avoid the cars coming towards him as the passenger side windows were shot out. He ducked down, and when he got onto the main thoroughfare, he skidded to the left, going around buses and screaming tourists.

The airport was back across the river, and he'd need to cross another bridge further down to get to it. He took a deep breath, checking his mirrors. His pursuers weren't having quite the easiest time of getting around the oncoming traffic. Anderson, however, lived in New York, had studied human nature. You had to make people think you'd really hit them before they got out of the way. Anderson wondered why these men had any compunction about running over a few wayward citizens.

Anderson certainly didn't.

Continuing on this road, he nearly had a straight shot to the street that would take him to his bridge, but that seemed dangerous. He would need to twist through various side streets to avoid any more gunshots. He saw an opening as the streetlights were in the middle of changing, and he crossed the street even as opposing traffic began to move, pulling a hard right into a smaller street. A glance in the mirrors didn't reveal Westberg and his crony, but he was certain that they had seen where he'd gone. He kept driving as though they were right behind him.

Right, straight, left, straight, right: he wove his way around. Police lights began amassing as he ran more lights and caused more damage. But Westberg was nowhere in sight. He didn't dare breathe in relief, but he did relax slightly, came down into third gear as he crossed from Gabelsberger, over the tracks, to Saint Julien. It was then that he realized his folly, as seconds later, Westberg pulled out, gun already shooting.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed. He looked around him. It wasn't exactly a straight shot across the bridge, but it would have to do. He hit the clutch and shifted down into first before jamming on the gas. The Aston Martin shot forward to over a hundred miles per hour and, to the tune of brakes, crashes, and horns, dashed across the bridge. As he looked behind him he was astonished when two black riot vehicles met in the middle of the street, effectively cutting off Westberg. Minutes later he pulled to a smoking stop in the passenger drop-off and dropped the keys into a wide-eyed porter's hands.

"Do something about that, will you?" he asked without looking back and strolled barefoot into the airport.

He did manage to make it to the ticket counter before collapsing.


	4. Intermission One: It's You, That's Your Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith just wants to know what the hell is going on.

Keith was never, ever going to get used to late-night phone calls from briskly professional Brits telling him his lover was in the hospital. Apparently Anderson had been heavily beaten, but was only being kept at the hospital to make sure he actually rested and didn't try to run around. In other words: "Could you come get him so we don't have to deal with him anymore?" Keith wanted to say something about not being a baby-sitter, but the man had, rather rudely, hung up after giving him the pertinent information.

And it was times like these that Rachel was an invaluable friend. She smoothed things over with the higher ups, though Phil Griffin was pretty willing to cut him some slack. Anderson was really the only person in the news business who took vacations to go do more work. Keith didn't bother trying to define the word for him anymore.

This most recent "vacation" had Keith building up a head of anger so large that he was surprised there wasn't a physical manifestation bouncing off the airplane hull, the cab roof, or the hospital walls.

There he was. Poking suspiciously at a cup of green jello. His lover distrusted things that had fruit suspended in them, mostly because of one unfortunate incident with a drink -- he'd tried to knock it back and ended up choking on a blackberry.

That, and he couldn't figure out why the jiggling dessert was always disappearing from his home when he never saw Keith eating it. It was surprisingly difficult to mess up. Keith had yet to point out that when Anderson was out of the country, as he frequently was, it was pretty difficult for him to know what Keith was eating. Keith liked jello.

There were aspects of Anderson's personality that Keith fairly detested, and the first on that list, far ahead of his jello suspicion, was his tendency to downplay everything. He supposed it came from a lifetime of seeing the worst of the world; after a while you simply became inured to 'petty' tragedies.

Second on that list was his lack of regard for his personal safety. Part of the Double-O package? Keith doubted it. Self-preservation, he suspected, had been left out of Anderson's hard-wiring.

"Really, I'm fine," Anderson told him.

"You're laying in a hospital looking nearly as bad as you did the _last_ time I saw you in a hospital, and you're saying it's not that bad? And where the hell do you get off going rogue like that?" Keith was about as angry as he'd ever been. Anderson provoked both the best and worst parts of him. Not that he wasn't completely justified.

"It's not as bad as last time. I don't even have any broken bones. They just knocked me around. I'd comment that his hired help didn't have much imagination, but I think you'd just hit me."

"They knocked you around with a _tire iron_!"

"I know; they could have been far more creative."

Keith wanted to wring his skinny little neck. "You know, you think you're funny."

"Thanks."

"But you're absolutely _not_."

*****

They arrived home with little fanfare. Molly was retrieved from Rachel's with assurances that Poppy hadn't tried to knock her up, and she inspected Anderson thoroughly but could find nothing that suggested he couldn't go on the air the next night. The bruising to Anderson's face had been minimal and was easily covered by makeup, though it did nothing for the ache that accompanied his facial expressions.

Anderson, it turned out, hadn't been lying when he had said he was fine. His collapse at the airport had had more to do with adrenaline let down after exposure to an unknown incapacitating agent. He was sore, to be sure, even Double-Os nursed bruises, apparently. But Anderson assured him that if he needed to beat someone up for Keith, he could still do it with a minimum of complaining.

Keith asked him to kill Bill O'Reilly, but Anderson just laughed. He always thought Keith was kidding when he asked that. Keith wondered if he should shatter that particular illusion.

"You know, I like to think of myself as a fairly understanding person--" Keith started.

"You'd have to be to live with me," Anderson told him, looking appropriately sheepish. Keith sniffed. Well, at least Anderson knew what a burden it was having him around.

"But I'm about three seconds from kicking your ass. You still haven't answered me about this rogue thing."

"It wasn't going rogue," Anderson said defensively, face telling Keith that that was exactly what it was.

"And what part of not telling MI-6 or me makes it _not_."

"I told you!"

"You lied to me," Keith clarified.

Anderson paused. "Fair enough," he said shortly, before collapsing with a wince onto the couch, giving Molly a scratch when she jumped up beside him. "I caught a lead and I... I wasn't sure MI-6 would let me follow through on it. It was tenuous at best and I just wanted to make sure."

"So when you called me it was because you hadn't learned anything useful?"

"I had, but beyond that I was at a dead end. I caught a lucky break."

Keith nodded and sighed himself. "Drink?"

"You would be my hero if you told me there was some Patron left," Anderson groaned.

"Sure, want a shot?"

"Just... bring the bottle." Catching up on a week's worth of trashy TV and drinking top shelf tequila was not exactly what Keith had in mind for the night's festivities, but knew Anderson was too sore to do much else. The man hadn't yet been chewed out by his place of employment, and Keith knew it had to be coming. Keith could give him this night, he supposed.

Anderson had fallen asleep fairly early and Keith had spent the rest of the night watching football highlights.

And then an arm like a vice clamped over his hips and he looked down in concern. Anderson was still asleep, his eyes moving fast, his limbs twitching, and when he muted the TV he heard the very faintest hum of a whine. He shut off the TV and turned onto a hip, laying a hand on Anderson's back.

"Anderson, come on, wake up," he said a low voice, repeating those words, stroking his warm back through the thin t-shirt. Finally, Anderson's body relaxed and his eyes fluttered open with a shuddering breath. He stared at Keith a little confusedly before hauling himself upright. He scratched at his head.

"Fuck," Anderson said quietly.

"Haven't had one of those in a while," Keith said noncommittally. He wondered -- he postulated that whatever this rogue mission had been about, it had _something_ to do with what had happened back in November.

"Nothing too bad," Anderson assured him. "Just tired and achy."

He turned and gave Keith a sweet smile, hitching himself closer. Keith let his own smile grow and accepted the kiss when it came. Gentle, chapped lips brushed over each other, and Keith let his tongue swipe over his and Anderson's, which the latter took as an invitation. Their tongues dueled shallowly, and though the stale taste of tequila wasn't Keith's favorite, he relished the chance to take Anderson's mouth.

Sex with Anderson was always good, even those nights when one or the other was too tired to do much. If the other wanted, the other gave. Tonight, the need in Anderson was obvious and Keith answered that need. He pushed his lover onto his back and hauled his legs up.

"Fast and hard?" he asked, already breathing like a racehorse. Anderson urged him down onto his body, nodding as he went. They kissed, messily, deeply, and it never failed to turn Keith on. Anderson definitely knew what to do with his tongue. Keith scrambled at the bedside table, pulling out the lube and a condom. This was a night that Anderson wouldn't care for preparation, but Keith got at least one finger in before the other man was squirming, pulling at Keith's cock.

"Now, now, now," he said, hitching a leg over Keith's shoulder. The same position would have given Keith a cramp, or a hernia, but Anderson folded easily, like the origami Keith caught him doing when no guns were available to clean. Keith didn't waste any more time before thrusting in, all the way in one smooth motion, without stopping. Anderson's mouth dropped open and he panted, eyes closed, through the sensations. Anderson was like a furnace around Keith's dick and he felt sweat drip down his back, off his temple. He gave Anderson a few moments before clutching him close and fucking him hard.

They didn't do this often. They were both much more likely to want it slow, to make it as physically undemanding as possible given their respective jobs and temperaments. But some nights, after missions, when they hadn't had sex in awhile, it was like this. Messy and uncomplicated and so hot that the top of Keith's head felt like it was going to blow off. Anderson moaned in a harsh, staccato rhythm every time Keith pressed in. It was fucks like these when Anderson wouldn't touch himself. Instead, Keith would watch as he lost himself in every sensation. The press of Keith's arms, the percussive pressure on his prostate , the friction and sweat.

Anderson wasn't moaning anymore; his voice was gone, taken by panting, and he arched like a gymnast and came between them. For Keith, it was the sight of Anderson, abandoned, passionate, that inflamed him, and he drove in all the harder, faster, chasing his orgasm even as Anderson urged him on with strong thighs and dirty words.

Anderson pulled his hair, hard, and Keith stuttered into climax, pressing Anderson so close he doubted the other man could breathe. He could barely breathe himself as he came down. He pulled out as gently as he could manage, but didn't let go of his lover.

As they caught their breath, hands involuntarily squeezing at the flesh they were wrapped around, Keith let the memory of Anderson's nightmare, or at least bad dream, come back to him.

"Plan on letting me know what happened?" he asked casually. Anderson was up and out of bed practically before he'd finished the sentence, and Keith girded himself for what promised to be an epic battle. Anderson was intransigent when it came to divulging the content of his subconscious meanderings. Keith tried and tried and frankly, with the latest stunt that had probably brought the nightmare _on_, he wasn't ready to let it slip. In his mind, Dvorak, the soundtrack to all their arguments--slightly dark, slightly adventurous, with humorous turns--came on, and he got out of bed himself, pulling on his boxers and t-shirt.

"Well, let me tell you what _I_ think happened, hmm? I think you got in a little too deep. I think you went rogue because of last November, and I think you're having this reaction because you really _haven't_ dealt with it."

"I've dealt with it fine," Anderson said, coming out of the bathroom with a washcloth, cleaning them both up with a few efficient strokes. "My therapist cleared me three months ago."

"Okay, cleared you so you could do your job and not wake up screaming and generally function, but--"

"Keith! There was nothing." He was grinding his teeth and looking away, his sign of frustration with himself. "There was a connection, I won't deny that, but beyond that--"

"Anderson," he said lowly. "You haven't had a nightmare like that in nearly four months."

"I know," he sighed.

"Why did you go rogue?"

Anderson's eyes flashed and he left the bedroom. Keith took a deep breath and followed, his own face burning with anger.

"So, you just expect me to sit back while you do this kind of asinine shit? Going off on your own without even a directive from MI-6? Getting yourself into these situations--Jesus, you wouldn't have gotten away had those pictures not been sent directly to MI-6. You told me that yourself!"

"So what? You know what, Keith, maybe you should jump to the point of this, 'cause frankly I'm not sure your concern is entirely altruistic."

"Of _course_ it's not fucking _altruistic_. You're my lover, you really think I, what, _enjoy_ this other life of yours?"

"You knew what you were getting into," Anderson's voice was icy cold, eyes just blue chips in a slitted gaze. "You knew and I thought you'd gotten over this."

"Yeah, well maybe I'm not as well-adjusted as you," Keith snarled. And Christ, how had it gone from sex to this? Only he and Anderson, he suspected, could turn complete one-eighties on each other without being diagnosed as bi-polar. He sighed and leaned against the hall wall. Anderson, too, had taken to holding himself up against the opposite wall.

"So, that's it? Just my job?"

"No, Anderson," Keith said, shaking his head, closing his eyes, gathering his thoughts. "It's you. For some reason, this new you. So bold, so confident, so fucking brash. It's like you're not you, anymore."

Anderson looked gutted -- not his expression, but the tweak of his lip, the sudden intake of breath into his belly, unclothed, and the almost imperceptible spasm of his fingers. He scratched at his neck and looked up into Keith's eyes. They were no longer cold, but they were shuttered, not letting Keith see a glimpse of what was going on behind them.

"I'm sorry," Anderson said tiredly, pushing himself slowly off the wall. "Let's just--let's go to bed, okay? I've missed you."

Keith let some of his concern bleed onto his face, but followed him, arm around Anderson's middle. He couldn't tell what he was apologizing for; Anderson was rarely explicit with these kinds of apologies. But Keith was willing to let it go. For tonight, anyway. He had missed Anderson too.

For longer than the week he'd been gone.


	5. We're Two of Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Keith's words continue to nag at Anderson, Quantum demonstrates it's hydra-like qualities. One head removed will not bring down the whole beast.

The knock at the door was jarring to say the least. It had been a week since he'd been home, a week since his and Keith's rather wrenching fight, and he'd yet to hear from his employers. Not CNN -- the other ones.

M was the last person he expected to see on the other side of the door. Her face was set in an unreadable expression, her hands thrust into her cream overcoat. Three agents came in and swept the place while he and M remained silent. Anderson finally gestured M in. She didn't wait to begin what he suspected was going to be succinct dressing-down.

"The only reason I'm not sacking you right now is that you've managed to bring us information we've been searching for for two years, not to mention that we've been waiting for this particular episode with you since your torture last year."

"You expected me to go rogue?" he asked her as she sat herself regally on a bar stool. He self-consciously moved their mail and copious newspapers out of the way.

"Of course," she said, her face carefully blank. "You think I don't know my own agents better than they know themselves? You, Cooper, have notoriously delayed reactions. At least Bond lets me know when he's about to jump off the deep end. I have to keep guessing with you."

"Sorry I couldn't be more predictable."

"Your unpredictability is, unfortunately, also one of your best assets. You've got these bastards on edge because they can't decide where you'll go from here, no matter what _I_ may say. Your Mr. Westberg managed to escape and there are no leads on how he might have known that you were our agent in Pakistan last November."

She paused and looked him straight in the eye.

"Do it again and I'll have you brought in," she said coldly. And it was not her foreboding tone or the blank look on her face, but her choice of words that told him she was utterly serious. M, like her predecessors, was remarkably proprietary of the Double-Os. She protected them, chose them herself, and ultimately expected more out of them than any other agent. Normally she would have said "I will bring you in." Today, she intimated that she would wash her hands of him. Would leave him to the mercies of the Foreign or even the Prime Minister.

She hopped gracefully off the stool, looking around his kitchen. There were pictures of nieces and nephews, drawings of Dora the Explorer, and post-it notes reminding Anderson to pick up coffee grounds and Coke.

"You have one week, then you're to report in. We have a mission for you."

"Anything to do with the information I brought in?"

She stared him down. "Yes, as a matter of fact."

*****

"She's taking quite a risk, you know, throwing us together," James Bond said as they sat outside M's office. Villiers was diligently tapping away at his computer, occasionally throwing them nasty looks.

"I know," Anderson acknowledged.

"Unfortunately, you and I happen to be the best agents. And you and I are the only ones who've crossed swords with this group."

"What is this group?" Anderson asked, still in the dark about the mission and what the information he'd obtained meant. He had put together a picture from the pieces he'd obtained on his own and from M, but otherwise he was completely ignorant. The case had been active since 2006, and they hadn't gotten a lead until Anderson had gone and done something stupid.

"A bunch of bloody wankers I wouldn't mind putting a few bullets in," Bond answered in a grumble. He looked at Anderson speculatively and Anderson looked right back.

"Yes?" Anderson finally asked.

"How are you and your news fellow doing?" Bond asked. Anderson stared at him incredulously.

"Don't tell me we're actually having a conversation about our social lives," Anderson scoffed.

Bond merely shrugged. "I'm curious. Not many of us have managed long-term relationships with long-term jobs like this one." Anderson was suddenly and violently reminded of Vesper Lynd, the woman who would have lured Bond away from the Service were it not for her betrayal.

Anderson sighed, thinking of his and Keith's fight, and shrugged nonchalantly. The fight was still bothering him. He remembered the tone of Keith's voice, the tiredness in his face that had nothing to do with needing sleep. The feeling Anderson had gotten that Keith had just been holding it in, waiting to discharge it onto Anderson. "It goes. It's hard, but we get over it."

Bond laughed. "That was a load of bollocks if I ever heard it."

Anderson scowled at him and opened his mouth to retort, but the door buzzed and M's unamused face was asking them in.

Anderson really loved this office, had modeled his own home on its sleek lines, glass displays and white furniture with all the appearance of openness, hiding more than it seemed . Today, daylight shone in, highlighting the white and blonde in M's hair, making Bond's eyes a reference point of color. Anderson felt horribly washed out. They sat before her desk, and Villiers came in and activated the computer screen--a highly advanced version of the "magic wall" that John King and CNN used--and stood by, waiting for orders.

"Your jaunt, exceedingly foolish though it was, Cooper, gave us quite a few leads we were lacking before, including information on where to focus our resources. The documents you provided us with were contracts, and not all of them had to do with Mr. Westberg's side of the business, though they were usually in collusion with it. Medvedev--" and the screen flickered to show the Russian president, with Vladimir Putin at his shoulder, plus all his pertinent information, "--signed a document with Quantum that makes Mr. Westberg's company, Heller and White Pharmaceuticals, the main supplier for Russian retailers. There also appears to be a connection to Greene Planet."

"It's still operating?" Bond demanded.

"Yes, apparently the loss of its CEO didn't even make a ripple in its operation and contracts. They've simply installed another CEO who is sympathetic, or shall I say entirely subservient to, their interests. Here is a deal through American and British banks--" Iran, Achmedenijad, and the names and information from several banks came up, "--that provides millions of dollars for Iran to buy nuclear materials. I think there's little doubt now that their nuclear program is not just for power. Another with China concerning their polluted water and cancer treatment...

"There are several more of these contracts, ranging from small to large, but all bring a significant share of money and control to Quantum and their shell corporations. What we are interested in, however, is this last document. Not a contract, but a list of meeting places. Frankly, I'm surprised that Westberg was stupid enough to write it down, but his stupidity is our windfall. Mr. Bond, Mr. Cooper, you're headed to Tokyo, Japan. Take a tuxedo."

They rose to leave, Villiers holding open the door.

"And Bond?" she called. They both turned to look at her. "Try not to kill anyone unless you absolutely have to, hmm?"

*****

Tokyo was one of those places that had been on Anderson's list of "Places to Visit Before I Die" since he read "Neuromancer" his senior year of high school. The president of the A/V club had tossed him a copy and said 'read it', and because Anderson loved A/V club and didn't want to be ostracized, he had. And he'd become fascinated by city and body politics and by technology. In the spectacular neon lights and the rushing of thousands of people he was brought right back to those images, looking for corporate tattoos and slick silver-bright eyes.

Bond was obviously less than impressed, but then, on the outside, so was Anderson.

"So, I'm assuming you're on this mission with me because M doesn't trust me?" Anderson asked as they stopped to pick up some food at a street-side shop.

"Partly," Bond told him with a quick smile. "Mostly it has to do with the fact that this is sort of my case. I've been on it since Le Chiffre."

"Right," Anderson said. "Then why am I here at all?"

"You're an asset, Cooper. You've been shaken by this dressing-down, but you're a good agent and you know it."

"That's what Keith and I fight about. Fought about," Anderson corrected himself hastily. James raised a curious eyebrow.

"So, now there _is_ something to talk about?"

Anderson sighed. "God, I really don't want to treat a fellow agent like "Dear Abby,"" he said, pouring soy sauce into his small dish. He clicked his chopsticks together before diving into the noodles.

"We've been intimate, Cooper, I think that entitles you to bend my ear a little," Bond said, amused.

"He's just..." he scoffed. "He thinks I've changed."

"Have you?"

"How the hell would I know? He called me confident and brash, but I can't see how those are bad things. How could finally being confident for once in my life be bad?" Too often his reticent nature kept him from articulating his opinions and following a course of action he thought was necessary.

"I have no idea," Bond told him.

"I don't know how I can deal with--how I can be with someone who thinks who I am is a bad thing? It's like 2002 all over again."

*****

In Tokyo, Anderson was a nonentity. He kept his hair its natural silver though he didn't make a spectacle of himself. Bond insisted that he be the one to attend the concert where the Quantum organization would be holding their meeting. He dressed carefully in his tux and carefully stowed his weapons. Bond debriefed him on how to spot the members and how to get in on the conversation.

The Tokyo City Opera Concert Hall was marvelous and huge, offering many private boxes, as well as acoustics that would have made Leopold Stokowski weep to conduct an orchestra there . He smiled, noting to himself to let Stan and Chris know about this place. There were nearly sixteen hundred people in attendance -- nearly full capacity -- and it took him a few minutes to find the select few who were picking up their gift bags near one corner of the lobby. He followed one of the men who'd grabbed a bag and followed him to the restroom, knocking him unconscious and getting his hands on the microphone and earbud, just as Bond had told him to do. He grumbled softly to himself about the organization needing a new _modus operandi_. He settled in at the theater, wishing, just a little, that Keith was with him. As the music started, a bombastic piece designed to put patrons on their toes, the meeting began.

"_We've had more trouble from intelligence_," said a quiet English voice.

"_Who?_"

"_Possibly the Americans, the man wouldn't talk and he escaped_," the same voice replied.

"_We've plugged the leak_?" a woman's voice, heavily accented, asked.

"_The man's camera was captured and destroyed, they know nothing. But I want him. We should endeavor to uncover his identity_." Anderson smiled to himself. During his beating, Westberg had presented the camera, mocked him with it, before crushing it. Anderson had been appropriately dismayed, but inside he had been crowing, because MI-6 had undoubtedly received the pictures. Apparently, Westberg wasn't quite as sharp as the rest of the tools in the box. The CEO's stupidity had probably saved his life, as Anderson had no intention of revealing himself here. Anderson opened one ear to the concert and kept the other trained on the earbud as the people went through vague and minor information.

The music was hit or miss, sometimes jangling, sometimes so incredible that everyone on the mic went dead silent to listen. One song in particular started so completely unassuming, one viola playing the same series of notes, joined by another instrument, joined by another instrument, and one by one the voices fell silent. It was like the construction of a building in fast-motion -- that was was the image that came to mind -- or the passing of Earth's history. The choir started in near the middle and Anderson closed his eyes, letting the music tickle across his spine and ribs, all the way to his thighs, to his toes. And then it declined, like entropy but nothing so violent. Like a feather that had climbed to its height, drifting back down to the ground. As it closed, everyone, including himself, leaped to their feet with applause.

Anderson was surprised, when he opened his eyes, to find them wet, stinging with salt. None around him were so affected, but mouths were open, faces and eyes were soft. One woman had a hand clasped to her chest.

"_An excellent piece_," came a whispered, moved voice, and Anderson had to wonder at men who wanted to control the world and everyone in it yet could still be touched by one composition. But then again, he supposed, kings were well known for having court musicians.

Music, it appeared, didn't belong to anyone. It belonged to everyone.

He shook his head at his philosophical thoughts.

"_I've a new contract that might interest some of you_," said a voice Anderson placed somewhere in the Pacific Islands. Maybe Indonesian. "_A group far more inclined to our interests than the men currently in power_."

"_Something in your home country_?"

"_The president is vulnerable and we have but the veneer of control and stability. One wrench in the works and everything could fall apart and into our hands. The hotel bombings were just a taste_."

"_The Moluccas have substantial geothermic activity, do they not_?" asked an American voice.

"_Indeed. The energy output could be enormous if harnessed correctly_."

"_Water situation_?"

"_Abundant, but still, demand grows. Lack of management in the uplands means that many resources aren't being exploited in a sufficient fashion. The current government does nothing. The people I have been speaking to are interested in our proposals_."

"_What about illness? Drugs_?"

"_Speed, ecstasy, and heroin are all popular and, for now, cheap. A capital offense. As for illness, we have as much as anyone, AIDS because of the needles, things are worse off in the poorer areas, on the outer islands_."

"_Madame, I do believe we have the makings of a real deal_," said an oily, pleased, British voice.

*****

They made their report to MI-6 that night. They had both wanted to follow one of the members, if Bond could recognize one of them, but Anderson's recent brush with insubordination had them playing it cautiously. Well, at least Bond was willing to play it cautiously. Anderson had been convinced he'd be able to stay hidden, but Bond wasn't having any of it.

"I want to know which group is the one so desperate to take over Indonesia that they're willing to sell everything to Quantum," M said over the line, and Anderson could hear the frustration in her voice. "This information is hereforth need-to-know; don't go blabbing to anyone but myself and Villiers."

"You suspect another mole?" Bond asked.

"Not specifically, but I'm not wagering on the clean-up we did two years ago. There could easily be a new one at this point. Get to Indonesia and get to the bottom of this."

They disconnected, and Anderson began undressing from his tuxedo. Bond lay on one of the beds watching appreciatively.

"You know, I do have a partner. You ogling me like that isn't exactly appropriate," Anderson said, secretly pleased. He didn't think of himself as vain, but he didn't see anything wrong with being admired from an aesthetic point of view.

"My feeling is you could go in the other room. If you were really all that shy about your kit you wouldn't be changing right in front of me." Anderson supposed he couldn't argue with that kind of logic and continued undressing until he was down to his underwear.

"Hmm, I see that Double-O status has only done good things for you," Bond said.

It sparked something in Anderson, a memory of Keith standing across from him, features painted with disappointment. He threw his undershirt in a ball at his suitcase, unaccountably bothered, and removed his pants with short, jerky movements.

"Have I struck a chord?" Bond asked, voice full of mischief. "Oh, sorry, I suppose even if I'm allowed to look I'm not allowed to make those kinds of comments."

"I haven't changed that much," Anderson said shortly, pouring them both a drink. He didn't even bother with ice as he downed the bourbon and poured another.

"Certainly you have," Bond said, growing warm to his subject. "Your legs alone look about ten times stronger."

"So, I'm working out a little more. It's important. We have the most dangerous jobs in the world, I don't want to die just because I couldn't be bothered to go jogging every so often."

There was a small pause. "Of course. The danger also means needing to be confident, needing to be better than everyone else."

Hearing the word 'confident' made Anderson flinch. _"It's you. For some reason, this new you. So bold, so confident, so fucking brash. It's like you're not you, anymore."_

"Exactly," he said, voice strong, conviction stronger. Keith was wrong. He had changed, sure, but it had been necessary, it had been the best way to ensure survival. What did Keith want if not Anderson's very survival? Anderson wasn't insecure enough to ask Bond if it was okay that he was a different person now. He suspected Bond was much like he was.

The pause following Anderson's affirmation sounded calculating and he turned to regard Bond, whose eyes hadn't strayed from Anderson's form

"It's not something a lot of people can understand, what it takes to be like us. To come out of every fight swinging," Bond said, voice low and unassuming. Anderson took a drink, washing down the bitter taste of adrenaline, wondering whether Bond was being deliberately provocative, or simply taking a shot in the dark. Anderson wasn't easy to read -- he'd been told that many times in his life by many people -- but he knew Bond knew how. And it had nothing to do with having had his dick up Anderson's ass.

"It's why there's so few of us," Anderson commented casually.

Bond inclined his head in agreement. "It takes a certain sort of personality to be able to do what we do and not become unhinged. We have faculties others do not. It can make us seem... unsavory or unfeeling, but that does not mean we are."

Anderson didn't think Bond was a mind-reader, but he could have been wrong. "Right," he said softly, finishing his drink. He got into bed then and ignored the unfailing stare from the other bed.

Anderson was the same as he'd always been.

*****

Bond was up and dressed when Anderson woke the next morning, already logged onto their laptop and clicking away without a glance at Anderson. He showered and began packing, already mentally listing off the equipment and clothes he and Bond would need for the coming mission.

"What are you working on?" Anderson finally asked.

"Doing some research. Message boards and forums, mostly. Internet usage isn't exceedingly high in Indonesia, but the world wide web holds a wealth of information."

"Anything specific?"

"There are quite a few groups that they could have been talking about last night. We can eliminate those with more radical platforms and those without the numbers. Some seem quite legitimate. We should give them our attention first."

"Have you been posting?"

"No, should I have?" Bond asked. Anderson shooed him from the computer, pulled up the search history and went to a few of the boards. "This will take a little bit, want to order us some food?"

"Relegated to fetch and carry, hmm?" Bond teased. Anderson smiled and shooed him away. He turned back to the laptop and began systematically registering at the boards, adding scant profile information, and started looking like an interested party. He carefully left questions and feedback in the forums. It would take a few days to get worthwhile information, but in the meantime they could do more hands-on research.

Done with that, he booked them a flight to Jakarta and hotel reservations at the best hotel there.

"So, are we to be undercover?" Bond asked when they sat down to lunch.

"Of course," Anderson told him.

A mischievous twinkle was leveled at him, "And what will that cover be, hmm? Businessmen? Friends? Lovers?"

Anderson glared at him. "You're loving this too much." It made Bond laugh heartily.

"I must confess, I am. I should have snatched you up when I had the chance, instead of leaving you to that man's tender mercies."

It made Anderson frown and he looked away, focusing on his sushi. After lunch they packed up their few belongings and sent them on to the airport, stopping to shop for appropriate clothing for Indonesia. There would be no stop home. It was for expediency's sake, Anderson told himself. Nothing else. It had nothing to do with the split-second thought he'd had after Bond's quip. He wanted to ignore the part of him that wanted to say "Yes, you should have."


	6. If You Must Pretend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Anderson, this mission is about more than beating the bad guys. And that is not a good thing.

In another reality, where the world was at peace and Anderson had a father and a brother, he imagined that he and James Bond might have met on vacation. They would have been sitting next to each other on a plane en route to some exotic locale--some place no one else would go, but not the desperate, desolate places they're used to--maybe even someplace like Jakarta. They would not have said word one to each other, only surreptitiously run their eyes over one another, letting slip small smiles. They would have, serendipitously, been staying at the same hotel, and there one of them would have canceled his reservation, and they wouldn't have seen a tree, restaurant or natural spring in their week in the country. They would only have seen each other. Further, it would have continued from there. Anderson would have learned that James was a banker, or a professional gambler, or something that allowed him to keep his expensive cars and immaculate appearance. Anderson would have been a writer or maybe a professor. They would have built a flawless life together.

Because in this reality there would have been no need for Keith Olbermann's voice of reason come 2003. He would have been some sports guy that their friends would have mentioned when they talked about sports, conversations that he and James would have tried to leave as soon as was politely possible. He'd have been the old, pudgy guy in the terrible suits who reported from the sidelines of the 2008 Superbowl at a party that friends would have forced them to attend.

These thoughts dogged him as he and Bond stepped off the plane into the humid heat of Jakarta. They were right on the verge of the wet season--something Anderson was not looking forward to--and he noticed people looking at the skies every so often, as though the raging sun would suddenly give way to a torrential downpour.

Jakarta itself looked like any other city Anderson had spent time in. Evening had descended in the time since they had disembarked, and the city was lit up. Perhaps it wasn't as bright as Tokyo, but it certainly held its own. A lengthy drive took them around the city until they arrived at their hotel. M usually insisted on some notion of anonymity, but neither Bond nor Anderson believed that meant they had to stay in a hovel of a hotel. Their clothes alone made that notion patently ridiculous. The Park Lane was as well-appointed and glamorous as any Ritz, and the concierge knew not to even bat an eyelash when they asked for one Premier Club Room.

"Of course, now we have to play at being lovers," Bond whispered in his ear as they rode up in the elevator. The bellman with their bags, well trained, didn't turn around, and in the mirrored paneling his face remained impassive. Anderson smiled a little and turned his mouth to Bond's ear.

"Yes, I suppose we do," he said, letting a little heat into his voice. It was almost too easy, falling into this role, and Anderson thought maybe it shouldn't be. But had he not done more in this line of work--blow jobs, going down on women, even full-on sex--than a little flirting in the name of a cover? It shouldn't be different with James. But it was, and Anderson felt it acutely.

They wasted no time on pleasantries when they were left alone. They set up their laptops and checked in with M, who had little information to impart, still hunting for the mole she was certain had infiltrated her organization. Conversely, Anderson's feelers online had yielded more interesting information.

"According to several people, there are a couple of groups which are sufficiently militant and have enough backing that they could be behind it," Anderson told James as the other man emerged from the bathroom, a towel around his neck and toothbrush sticking out from one side of his mouth. It was an endearing sight, and Anderson had to look back to the screen to hide a small smile.

"What about contacts?"

Anderson scrolled through the responses and picked out one of the names. "This guy 'Son of Allah'--my, he's quite full of himself--seems friendly. Ish, anyway. He's given me the most information. I could try cultivating something with him."

"As money or a true believer?" Bond asked, reemerging from the bathroom, sans toothbrush, vigorously rubbing his head with the towel.

"I don't think either of us would pass as a true believer if we were to meet face to face," Anderson told him. He contemplated the bright lights outside the window as an idea occurred to him. He smiled thinly. "But, who's to say we have to be in the market for _that_?"

A smile spread slowly across Bond's face as he dialed M's number.

"We have an idea for a plan, but we're going to need some assistance."

*****

Missions on the fly, that is those that hadn't had months of preparation, were, by their very haphazard nature, infinitely more dangerous than many others. Even the assassination of bin Laden had taken a week of preparation. Bond and Anderson were essentially making it up as they went along.

"My feeling is that the Foreign Minister hasn't the foggiest what's going on in his country," M told them on conference call. "We're keeping him quiet, to give you two some time. We don't want these people getting scared. He seems to be cooperating. Ms. Amanpour will be joining you tomorrow. She'll be carrying the packet we've managed to put together and will assist you on this mission."

They spent the day after their arrival in Jakarta seeing the city. There were many districts, modernity bordering tradition in a way you never saw in America. They ate well, they spoke in circumspect terms about the mission and their plans, and most of all, they avoided the subject of Keith Olbermann. Or at least, Bond smirked and Anderson avoided.

And the flirting only ratcheted up further and further. It put Anderson on edge, guilty and titillated at the same time. Another part of him was looking for some kind of resentful revenge. He didn't know where the impulse came from, but it knotted in his stomach and made him grind his teeth.

Christiane's arrival was welcome, if only as a break from the constant, low-level sexual tension between him and Bond. Christiane was a beautiful woman and Bond couldn't help but banter with her.

"I suppose it would be too much to ask to keep the flirting to a minimum," she said as they arrived back at the hotel.

"I think it would be something like asking the Pope not to be Catholic," Anderson retorted, giving Bond a smirk.

Despite Bond flirting with the both of them when he could manage it, they worked quickly through the information that MI-6 had provided.

"M is unsure about the mole, only that it is not a Double-O or Villiers. She can't be entirely sure. Her position relies on too many people. For the moment, only our mission remains completely classified. In regards to the mission, we believe we've found the groups that Quantum were speaking of at the concert. It is actually a coalition of Kalla supporters looking to defeat Yudhoyono in the general election."

"So are we we talking armed takeover or electoral fraud?" Anderson asked. "Because Yudhoyono is pretty popular and would probably be able to wrest back control easily, given his military career."

"Wasn't Kalla his vice president?" Bond asked, mixing drinks behind the bar.

"Yes, but with Yudhoyono's support he took a few very powerful positions in government, effectively becoming more powerful than Yudhoyono himself. There has always been talk of rivalry, but both men have denied it. As for how Quantum and the coalition will proceed with their plans, we haven't the faintest clue. We've got agents monitoring movements of the disparate elements and looking for weapons stockpiles, but they've so far been unsuccessful. The question remains what we do in the meantime."

"If we've found the groups then the next step should be some kind of infiltration. We need information."

"I don't think this is going to be as easy as James or I walking in and asking for a brochure," Anderson quipped, taking his martini. "They were very touchy about information on the internet, and you know if someone gets touchy about handing out information _there_ that it's a pretty sensitive topic. We were thinking of offering them something else they might want."

"Fortunately, for us, this isn't a religious thing. It's entirely about personal gain and glory," Christiane said, sipping her own drink and smiling at them with her eyes.

"You have an idea," Anderson stated, no question in his mind.

"I have an idea."

*****

The idea was not a new one to MI-6 or even to Christiane. In the old days, there was really only one use for a woman in active service, because more often than not it was men who had the information, and, more often than not, men were more likely to think with their dick than their head when a beautiful woman was on offer.

"You really want to seduce one of these guys?" Anderson asked incredulously. It wasn't the idea that surprised him--Anderson was obviously not adverse to using his own body to gain information--but that it was Christiane. She seemed too elegant, too hands-off, too damn wily to use something as mundane and base as sex to get what she wanted.

"Seduce, yes, of course. That has nothing to do with whether or not I actually have sex with the man," Christiane stated. She had gone out the next morning and come back with several outfits that were demure, but sexy, meant to entice but not put on a free show. Anderson and Bond, it was decided, wouldn't even have the reassurance of a bug. Christiane assured them that she knew what she was doing, that she hadn't gotten this far by being stupid and having the big strong men looking over her shoulder.

That night she disappeared into the city. Anderson and Bond twiddled their thumbs and drank until the early morning, waiting for her return. But she didn't and, of course, there was no indication that she wanted them to come get her.

The introduction, according to Christiane, went a little something like this:

Their contact, Mr. Sumanputra, had met her in the lounge of another swanky hotel. A few well-dropped hints and Christiane was suddenly his date to a very upscale party in a neighborhood known for its political inhabitants. The party hadn't been at Kalla's and hadn't been explicitly in support of him, but Christiane learned, over the course of the evening, that it might as well have been.

"Sometimes, force is the only option for getting one's message across," one man had said to her. It had, on the surface, been an academic discussion over changes in government. Several others in the group had nodded, though.

"There has been rumor," Christiane had said, looking closely at the people around her, "that some would be more amenable to outside... influence, in order to advance the country."

"Indeed, I suppose there are some," the man had said, and the knowing smirks all around her told her everything she needed to know.

The party had lasted into the early morning, and Christiane had begged off from her escort, promising to see him again that night. Hopefully, in the end, they would have the same information that they would have gotten with Anderson and Bond's plan, with considerably less fuss.

"So, we know these guys are behind it, and you're going to see Sumanputra again, tonight?" Anderson asked, quickly typing up the information for M.

"They are most definitely the one that Quantum has contacted. They dropped more than a few hints that there were outside groups that were willing to do quite a bit for them."

"I had no idea the relations between the president and vice-president were so tenuous, or so virulent," Bond said.

"More likely it's their supporters that are causing the stink," Anderson said. "And Kalla hasn't exactly shown himself to be lacking in ambition. He's just not putting himself in a position where he can take the fall for any of this." His Blackberry dinged and he frowned, checking it as the other two began preparing for that night.

_You picked a good time to go on vacation there is NOTHING happening right now. Right, miss you, hope you're safe or at least not getting the shit beat out of you. Love, Keith._

He stared at the message, a feeling of great warmth and another of great guilt and anger smothering him. Why he felt the latter, he couldn't guess. The guilt was easy to guess, he thought to himself as he caught Bond's eye. The anger... _So, you just expect me to sit back while you do this kind of asinine shit? Going off on your own without even a directive from MI-6? Getting yourself into these situations--Jesus, you wouldn't have gotten away had those pictures not been sent directly to MI-6. You told me that yourself!_ He flinched at the memory, like he'd been slapped, like someone had just spit in his face, and pocketed the phone.

"I need some air," he said. He quirked an eyebrow at them. "Coming?"

*****

He didn't exactly drink himself stupid, but he had more than his usual. Bond was smirking at him, drinking more slowly, dropping hints like he knew exactly who had sent that text and exactly how it had made Anderson feel. Bond had an irritating way of being able to read everything in Anderson's actions. But the man was a champion poker player who had earned his skills not from math but from reading other people.

Anderson, though, had been trained in how to keep his mouth shut. To his adoring public this meant not talking about his personal life. To his employers this made him a vital asset. To his friends and family and lovers? This made him unavailable and impossible to get along with.

The music was loud and pulsing, and Anderson was pretty certain the lyrics were in Spanish. The rap sounded angry, but Anderson could only pick out a few words. He stared at Bond and let a smile grow. He stood and took Bond's hand, encouraging him to stand before leading him out onto a crowded dance floor. Bond didn't object, went willingly, and pulled Anderson back against him as they joined the throng. Anderson writhed to the beat, losing himself in his buzz and the feel of a hard body at his back.

Keith didn't dance, not even in the privacy of Anderson's apartment. He'd put on some sexy little song and try to get Keith to dance, move his body against him, but he wouldn't, and Anderson would let the matter drop, would let Keith just drag him off to bed (or the couch if he had gotten him too worked up.)

Bond didn't hesitate, and his hands framed Anderson's hips, taking control. Anderson let his body go loose and an arm wound up Bond's neck. Bond's hands smoothed up and down, brushing his groin as he stroked his inner thigh, almost flicking a hardened nipple as he cupped the hard lines of Anderson's chest. Anderson was hard, there was no denying it, and he felt sexier than he'd felt in a long time. His eyes caught the admiring glances they were receiving. He smirked and winked at a few before turning in Bond's arms. Their hips met, and they might as well have been naked as they ground together. The top of Anderson's lip was wet with sweat and he licked at it, tasting salt and aftershave. It drew Bond's gaze, and the man's eyes darkened, his hands clenching where they grabbed at Anderson's ass.

The song they were listening to melded seamlessly into a more recognizable one, and Anderson grinned as their rhythm changed with it. Around them, arms pumped in the air in time to the beat of the song. Bond was leaning forward, the tip of his tongue licking at the stubble on Anderson's chin and jaw. Anderson tipped his head back, allowed it, even as guilt lapped at his conscience. Dancing was one thing. Bond's tongue was suggesting something else entirely.

He was saved from the choice of having to pull away or not by the arrival of someone he did not expect. He smiled and tapped Bond's shoulder, pointing out who had just entered the club.

Christiane did not look like any spy or reporter Anderson had ever met. He would never have thought that she could carry off the look she was currently sporting. But judging from the many admiring glances of the men in the club and the appraising eyebrow from Bond, he gathered that she was carrying it off just fine. When they had left she had been wearing a linen suit. But apparently she had already met up with her contact because she was dressed... provocatively, to say the least. The copper-colored top she was wearing was plunging in both the back and front and seemed to be held onto her body by a couple of beaded strings. She held herself with more confidence than did younger women in the club who were wearing significantly less, and though she smiled and allowed the men to look, she seemed, for all intents and purposes, completely devoted to her contact.

"And now I'm wondering if this," and Anderson made it a point to grind shamelessly at the hard-on next to his, "is for me or for her."

"It can't be both?" Bond asked, incorrigibly.

Anderson smirked and ground against it again.

"Besides, are you planning on doing anything about it?"

The smile dropped off Anderson's face and he stepped away, a heated rage and nausea assaulting him. He didn't say anything; he was too tongue-tied to even think of a proper comeback. He retreated from the dance floor, dropped enough money on their table for his bill and tip and exited the club.

It was hardly cooler outside, though without the crush of bodies it was somewhat more tolerable. His anger at himself and his irritation with Bond were more than enough to keep him overheated though. He hailed a cab and returned to the hotel.

To hell with Bond. And to hell with himself.

*****

_"Oh, little one, it has been too long," said a familiar voice. Anderson's eyes snapped open. The tent. He quickly shut them again, breathing slow and deep, repeating his therapist's mantra to himself, trying to regain control._

_"Oh no, I don't think so," came another voice. It was Westberg, grinning down at him with teeth too white to have been obtained with anything other than lasers and chemicals. "Are you not trained to withstand torture? Hmm? Give us a truthful answer this time?"_

_Anderson opened his eyes, steeling himself._

_"Neither of you are real," he gritted out._

_"And me?" Asked Thug One._

_"And me?" Asked Thug Two._

_"The way you've been acting, you'd think the entire world revolved around you. Well congrats, babe, here's your world in stereo surround sound," said Keith, emerging from a dark corner._

_"I'm _fine_," Anderson said emphatically, as much to himself as to Dream-Keith. "This isn't real."_

_"Then why are we here?" Keith asked. They were all gathered around the table and Anderson's eyes flickered to their faces, one by one. "You're 'fine', you're just dandy. Better than ever. Kicking ass and taking names! Can take a punch and not care. You can handle it right? 'Cause you're supposed to be able to, right?" He leaned in close, close enough for Anderson to kiss were he so inclined at the moment--which he was not--and whispered. "Who the hell do you think you're kidding?"_

*****

It wasn't anything like a villa, the camp where the meeting between the Quantum people and those in charge of the coup was taking place. This was a place meant to be concealed, not to hide in broad daylight. Clad in the worst of jungle camouflage--meaning the best except for fashionable purposes--Anderson and Bond had propped themselves up in a couple of tall trees about a hundred yards from the site. The binoculars they were using had a special hood over the top, so that even if guards and scouts were looking for reflections off the glass, they wouldn't find them.

Christiane's last outing with her contact, the night at the club, had proven fruitful, and she had been able to weasel quite a bit of information out of him with the help of a vast quantity of booze and a little rohypnol.

The members of Quantum were obvious in their caravan of trucks. This was, after all, quite a big deal. After the fuck-up in Bolivia it seemed they weren't taking any chances. They were surrounded by security guards, and the paramilitaries that would make up most of the coup surrounded the security guards. Anderson smiled to himself as Westberg stepped out of one of the trucks, looking far too pleased with himself.

"_I see Mr. White_," Bond reported from his perch. Anderson adjusted the mic in his ear and acknowledged the message. The man was dapper in his cream suit, but he was ugly, sneering. The only thing these people had to offer to him was more money and more power. He obviously cared for little else.

"How far up in the organization do you suppose he is?"

"_Difficult to say. They don't have the traditional hierarchical structure. I would say once you get to a certain level, say the persons we listened in on at the concert, there's nowhere else to go_."

As they chatted quietly, the group all gathered in one main tent. Anderson checked his camera, making sure it was aimed and focused. He began snapping off pictures of the people below, getting side views and front views and trying to find identifying marks. He zoomed out and snapped a group photo, smirking as he did so, and then focused in on the action. His finger hardly came off the shutter release as he documented the signing of a sheaf of papers. Bond's zoom lense was likely getting pictures of the actual content, down to the last period, and so Anderson focused on the people signing, specifically the Indonesians who would be arrested for their part in this. It was imperative that they be taken in or the coup would be allowed to happen, and Quantum would have won another country. Anderson already suspected that the United States was on that list, and even a change of government wouldn't change that.

And that's how he knew that nothing would really change.

The meeting appeared to be wrapping up, and handshakes and money were being exchanged. Anderson made sure to get a nice clear shot of Vice-President Kalla as one of the Quantum members moved out of the shot enough to show him. In the end, it was almost laughably easy as he tracked the movements of the man with the briefcase full of contracts. He noted which vehicle he got into, photographed the license plate number. As the Quantum trucks moved, he set down his camera and packed his things up.

He descended the tree and quickly found the path he'd made to lead him back to Bond. He wiped sweat from his eyes and startled at the sound of some agitated wildlife. He looked around but could see nothing but the green of the jungle and the gray of the sky. He shook himself, smiling at his skittish behavior, and continued on his path. Perhaps it was the careless manner of his walk, an enforced confidence in the wake of that embarrassing flinch, but he was focused on his trek and so was taken by surprise when something nailed him in the back of the head.

His gun flew out of his hand and he dropped like a brick. He regained his wits not a moment later and not a moment too soon as he rolled away from a nasty kick from a heavy boot. He jumped to his feet, dropping his equipment and taking a fighting stance, but that action cost him, and he found himself on the receiving end of a flurry of punches and hits, sending him back into a tree. He brought his arms up, blocking what he could and then jabbing a leg into the other man's knee.

With a curse the man dropped back. Anderson delivered his own punch, but the man was good, and strong, and was far better at blocking Anderson's attacks than Anderson had been. He nailed the man in the kidneys with a powerful elbow, which the man took with a pained grunt before retaliating with a wrench to Anderson's arm. He pulled away and caught Anderson in the stomach with another punch. The man kicked out and managed to hook a foot around Anderson's knees. A sharp twist brought Anderson to his knees and an arm around his neck.

"So, boss was right to be cautious," said the other man, his breath sticky on Anderson's cheek. Anderson couldn't answer, his airflow cut off and the knee, pressed just so into his back, making his legs jelly. His eyes darted around, looking for his gun. They hadn't brought any heavy artillery, needing to remain light, and his Walther PP9 wasn't exactly standing out on the dark ground.

Spots danced before his eyes and he struggled, trying to throw his attacker off or over his shoulder. His arms flailed back but the laughter in his ear told him how effective that was. His arms flapped downwards, searching for anything, a stick, a rock, a goddamn insect would suffice if only to break the man's grip just a little.

"A little overconfident, I think. We have eyes everywhere, and your intrusion will not be taken lightly. What are you, hmm? C.I.A.? And here I have you at my mercy."

Anderson's fingers encountered something metal, a shape he recognized and he gurgled a response to the man.

"What's that now? You want to spill all your secrets? You want me to let you _go_?"

"I have your gun," Anderson rasped out before snatching the object from the man's waistband, pulling his arm back and shooting wildly. A scream told him he'd found his mark, and the arm around his throat was snatched away. He drove an elbow back hoping to hit the bullet wound and got to his feet, gun still in hand.

"I don't believe overconfidence is _my_ problem," Anderson threw at him coolly, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the raspiness of his voice and his continued struggle for air. With that he put a bullet in the man's skull.

He gathered his things and made for the road, leaving the man's corpse to be picked over by the animals. Anderson very much doubted his employers would come for him.

Bond was looking amused when he saw Anderson walk up.

"I see you had a bit more trouble with yours than I," Bond said, and indeed Anderson couldn't see even the beginnings of a bruise on the man.

"He got lucky."

"Mmhmm," was Bond's noncommittal response. "Dead?"

"Yes."

"I simply left mine unconscious. He wasn't very good at his job, if I do say so myself."

Anderson ignored the churning in his stomach, a feeling of shame and confusion.

"I got the license number and a picture of the guy with the contracts."

"You think he'll stay with them?"

"I think it's a distinct possibility. He looked like a gopher."

"Let's go get him."

*****

"I have to congratulate you, Cooper, that was quite an impressive bit of work, stopping a coup and managing to get us a few of those bastards. And Bond, you didn't kill anyone, including the involuntary informant, so I'll consider the mission a success," M said dryly, looking impressed despite herself. "Westberg, a man we've identified as Lopez Inirida, and a woman, Sujatmi Wulandari were all brought in. Their companies, a logging company and a geothermic laboratory, have both distanced themselves, claiming that they were there without the permission of their board of directors. "

"You're kidding!" Anderson exclaimed. "The contracts--"

"I suspect that their boards are no less involved in this than these three; however, they have plausible deniability."

"And it's only important to preserve the company, not the people involved," Bond inserted. "Remember, Greene Planet was still active after Greene's death and was easily replaced."

"And we've had no hits on the others involved?" Anderson asked.

"Only the ones we already knew about and can't do anything to. Their names weren't on the contracts and so we have no real probable cause," she said, obviously pissed off with that particular detail. "These bastards have more protections than most world leaders, and their P.R. departments are already making the photographs Yudhoyono had released look like deliberate smear attempts, intimating that the man was simply looking for a scapegoat for his ineffectual handling of his government and his inability to spot the discontent that was boiling." And it was definitely working.

"So, back at square one," Bond said, looking deeply displeased.

M sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Frankly, both the Prime Minister and I are at something of a loss. These men have power, and we've no evidence to convict any of them of much beyond a traffic violation, and the ones in our custody are being singularly unhelpful. We can't even identify the others, which suggests that they are the power behind the throne rather than the heads of other companies involved."

"And the money Yudhoyono confiscated?"

"Traced right back to another middle-man. These bills have changed so many hands it was a miracle we found this man. He's not talking."

"Why do I feel like we didn't accomplish much at all?" Anderson asked, rubbing his head.

*****

It was easy, in the end. One moment's frustration at his near slip-up in the jungle, another thought about what awaited him at home, and the need to just _not deal with it,_ and Anderson was putty in Bond's extremely talented hands.

James touched him in all the right ways and made Anderson call out his name. He let Anderson fuck him and then returned the favor. They destroyed the sheets and left marks all over each other. Angry and fast, slow and passionate.

It had been the most dissatisfying sex of his life. If only because, when it was all over, everything he had wanted to forget, to prove, was still there taunting him.

_Shit,_ he thought. _Why am I such a fuck-up?_


	7. Intermission Two: Murder On Our Love Affair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing is, the affair was just the last straw. Keith has just been waiting around for the next thing.

_Vice President of Indonesia arrested at home Monday morning,_ the headline read. The article went on to say a whole lot of nothing that made Keith's teeth clench, because even though he knew about Anderson's secret profession, that didn't mean he was suddenly privy to all the details of his missions.

_Stubborn, reckless fool_, he thought to himself, even though he knew Anderson was all right.

The man was convinced of his own immortality these days, running into situations sure he'd come out on top. And, sure, maybe that was an optimistic attitude to have, but it needed to be tempered with the notion that caution and back-up were really great ways to _keep_ coming out on top.

Keith and Anderson had once had a very frank conversation about Anderson's activities before they had met. In the year following his graduation from college and his recruitment by M, Anderson had spent a year in Hanoi studying "Vietnamese." The truth was, Anderson never learned a lick of Vietnamese that he hadn't learned on the street as he trained to be an agent in Her Majesty's Secret Service. Much of being an agent, Anderson had told him, was about having the right demeanor. It was as much about being an actor as anything else. The confidence that Anderson had amassed since gaining Double-O status had apparently been the culmination of several years' worth of training. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing, you needed to look like there was nothing else you were supposed to be doing. He had explained that walking into that camp back in November could not have been accomplished had either he or Bond had a moment's hesitation, had either of them given any indication that they weren't supposed to be there.

It didn't take a genius I.Q. to figure out that Anderson was keeping something from him. There were faded bruises along his face and he hadn't even attempted banter, hadn't asked what was going on in the news world, hadn't even given Molly her usual attention. He had collapsed on the couch and cracked his neck before staring almost unblinkingly at the television. Keith went with this, settling beside him and trying to pull him close.

But Anderson was icy cold to him, pulling away to the opposite end of the couch, propping his head on one fist.

"Wanna talk about it?" Keith asked companionably, temper held in check.

"Not especially, no."

He let it go. He let it go the next day, too, until it was a week later and they hadn't had sex since Anderson had gotten back. Anderson was cleaning his guns again, inspecting every little detail, removing fingerprints and oiling them. Anderson suddenly arrived in the living room, looking agitated and pacing a little beside the couch, but not in front of the TV where Tennessee was, astonishingly, beating the tar out of Alabama in the third quarter. Keith let his eyes flicker back and forth between the screen and his disquieted lover.

"I slept with Bond," Anderson said quietly, abruptly. He wasn't looking at Keith and Keith couldn't look at anything but him.

Keith should have been surprised, wanted to play dumb, wanted to say 'yeah, back before we were together,' but Keith wasn't really surprised and didn't like playing dumb, because he really wasn't. The sucker-punch of that confession didn't feel like betrayal but the fulfillment of some long-held suspicion. He felt a tingle, like disappointment and bitterness and resignation, wash over him, and he swallowed, sighing deeply. Anger crackled on the edges of a ball of hurt and he pressed it inwards until the hurt was buried.

"What am I supposed to say to that, Anderson?" he asked, honestly. "Is it supposed to drive me away more quickly? 'Cause I gotta say, you were doing pretty well without the admission of infidelity."

"Then maybe you should go," Anderson said, his voice so calm that Keith actually felt sick.

"It's so fucking easy for you. You don't even fight," Keith said. He came to his feet, grabbed his keys and left, feeling heavy all over and pissed off and a million other things that added up to needing to get the fuck away from Anderson.

*****

His apartment smelled like mold and old cheese. He hadn't been here in months, had slept here even less, and it certainly showed. He hadn't bothered engaging any kind of housekeeper, and with his and Anderson's relationship going so well for so long he had anticipated not needing the place for much longer.

The thought made him snort in bitter amusement.

He tossed his keys onto the table next to the door and headed into the kitchen with the liquor he had managed to pick up, forgetting that the only food in his apartment was an old bottle of salad dressing and some blueberries that more greatly resembled raisins, now. He shrugged and pulled a highball from the cabinet. He filled the thing with ice--automatic ice-makers were great--and poured a near-full glass of the whiskey he'd bought.

His TiVo was filled with a season's worth of baseball games. He put on a Yankees/Indians game and settled in to not watch.

It had been a given, when Keith had gotten into the relationship, that Anderson was messed up and wouldn't know proper relationship etiquette. Keith had had his fair share of failures as far as relationships were concerned. Incompatibility, ego, and a marked inability to commit had been the highlights of his dating life prior to Anderson. And he had hoped he had left some of that behind as he slowly built something that might be long-lasting.

For all Anderson didn't know about relationships, Keith was fairly certain the "no cheating" rule was well-known to even the most relationship-phobic. Anderson had known how Keith would react to that news. Maybe it hadn't been malicious, maybe it hadn't been deliberate, but he had known it was hurtful. He knew Anderson had gone through years of picking up and dropping men like disposable razors, giving them the illusion of love and commitment only to pull it out from under them when they got too close. Too close emotionally? Too close to his secret? Who the fuck knew. But Keith had poked his, admittedly, giant head into that entire mess and hadn't even allowed himself the illusory thought that Anderson would straighten up and fly right. Anderson had perfectly lived down to Keith's expectations.

*****

"All right, I've let you get away with it for a week, but now I gotta ask, did Anderson have something to do with what happened in Indonesia?" Rachel asked.

Keith's jaw involuntarily clenched. "Don't know," he said, trying to keep his voice light.

"Just sayin'," Rachel said with a shrug.

"Well, he doesn't exactly keep me up to date on his more clandestine jobs," Keith said.

"I can't believe you're not more interested. I don't think I could help myself in your shoes. I mean, you're smart, you can probably figure out what he's been up to anyway."

Every word Rachel said was like a fucking needle in his eye. He hadn't spoken to anyone about what had happened between him and Anderson. Maybe it was the futile hope that they wouldn't be apart for too long. Maybe he was just ashamed that he couldn't make _another_ relationship work, despite the fact that it wasn't his fault this time. The anger was palpable and very close to a hurt he didn't want to acknowledge.

"Frankly, Rachel, most of the time I don't _want_ to hear what he gets up to, or can you be so blase about him going out there and killing people?"

It seemed to stop Rachel in her tracks. Keith doubted that, for all her love of spy novels and mystery, Rachel had ever stopped to really think about Anderson's work. Osama bin Laden was one thing, but what about the others? She didn't have to watch him polish up his guns, selecting carefully the piece that would be best for the job. Didn't see the aftermath of fights and torture and his eyes as they scanned every room, every conversation, every aspect of his life for danger or information.

"Wow, sensing some hostility, and while I'd love to play agony aunt here, you're kind of coming out of left field here," she said, eyes wide and concerned behind her glasses.

Keith sighed and pulled off his own glasses, tossing them carelessly to the desk. He looked at Rachel and she looked right back, expectant.

"We broke it off," he said, avoiding the phrasing "broke-up." It was far too high-school.

"What happened?" She didn't look overly shocked, those her eyebrows seemed perpetually raised. "You all seemed to be getting along pretty well."

Keith shook his head. "You were right about him being on a mission. Apparently, he expanded the parameters of that mission to include fucking his mission partner."

"Shit," she said, succinctly.

"He hasn't been himself that past month or so, Rachel. This was just-fuck, this just sort of--"

"Confirmed everything?" Rachel guessed.

"Yeah, something like that," he said.

"Keith," she said hesitantly, rubbing her lip, "I don't want to-I don't want to seem as though I'm calling your entire relationship into question, but you didn't take up with him until you knew his secret identity, and yes it is very hard to use that phrase with a straight face, but seriously, what if whatever 'changes' you've seen are just him normalizing?"

It would be tempting to say so, easier for him even. It would mean he could stop caring about Anderson wholesale. But he knew that was untrue. He knew that Anderson was in a dangerous place and maybe it made him a coward that he'd run as soon as Anderson had given him an excuse. Because Anderson had proven every misgiving, consciously acknowledged or not, that he had correct.

"No, no, maybe I don't know him as well as I should, but I know that this person he's become isn't _him_." There was no way to prove that, of course, it could be he knew Anderson even less than he thought. But something, gut deep, told him that this Anderson was floundering for something and Keith was didn't think he could give it to him.


	8. You Think You've Won

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not that Anderson doesn't know there is something dark in him. He just never realized how dark or how deep.

Around him the apartment was oppressively silent but for the lilting, echoing music from the speakers. He paid little attention to the captions and focused on the pictures, the emotions in the faces of the protagonists. There were plenty of social, economic, and political arguments to be made about the film, but Anderson, first and foremost, thought it was a love story. He had seen this movie once before with the original score and he wasn't half so affected as he was this night. Perhaps it was a stretch, to see him and Keith in Maria and Freder, but he felt every inch of the separation of the two characters as he and Molly sat in the darkened apartment.

_Metropolis_ played on, but Anderson's attention drifted.

He had readily admitted to himself and to Keith that sleeping with Bond was a mistake. But when they'd broken up it had been evident that he had hardly cared about the infidelity and was more concerned over other perceived slights. Had Keith just been waiting for a better reason? Waiting for Anderson to mess up? There were many aspersions you could cast on Keith Olbermann, but the man wasn't one to suffer in silence.

He woke later from a nightmare so intense his flailing feet hit Molly, causing her to yip in pain. He was upright immediately, pulling her close, shushing her and smoothing her coat. When she'd settled again, he swung his legs over the side and scrubbed his face.

"Shit," he whispered to himself. He breathed shakily and reflected in a kind of half-numb state that he hadn't had one so bad since he had stopped therapy. But for once Anderson hadn't been held down. He'd been completely free to move, but he made all the wrong moves, turned in all the wrong ways and did all the wrong things and Rush's face had morphed between Westberg's, Keith's, and, most disturbingly, his own. He recognized the self-flagellation in that sort of dream. It probably had to do with some bullshit about guilt and needing to punish himself. But the question that dogged him was whether that punishment was meant for having an affair with Bond or for something more nebulous.

Because this guilt thing had been with him a lot longer than his misplaced lust.

Anderson was not the kind of man to sit around and think about all his various neuroses and issues. He had written his book in a great torrent of half-repressed emotions and had sat back afterward with no need to do it again any time soon. Talking about it got boring and repetitive rather than gut-churning and hellish. So it had been in therapy less than three months ago. The therapist hardly had to ask him anything as a verbal diarrhea of nightmares and fears and memories came pouring out. They had dealt with some ways to recognize Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and he'd been declared fit for duty.

Maybe a symptom of PTSD was overcompensation.

*****

"You've got to be one of the dumber species of male I've come across," Rachel said with out preamble as she entered his apartment one morning. "And I say that as a friend of both Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams."

"In my defense, I actually do know that," Anderson said, grabbing a beer from his fridge and popping it open for her. It was one of Keith's high-end craft beers, gluten free of course, and Anderson hadn't gotten around to getting rid of them. Or the gluten-free bread. Or the strange assortment of dips and jams and things that Keith brought home from Trader Joe's whenever he was in there. He liked to think it was just because he was a lackadaisical housekeeper at best. He hadn't changed his sheets either.

"What possessed you to sleep with that guy?" she asked.

"I was... angry. I wanted to hurt Keith."

"Yeah, you totally missed the clue bus there, 'cause he had obviously been hurting for a while before that."

They stood, leaning up against the counters, her with her beer and he with his alcoholically enhanced Coke, and let the silence fall around them. They weren't the best of friends. They were friends for Keith's sake and because she was aware of his secret, but they'd never sat down for a heart to heart.

"He said some things to me," Anderson admitted. "Before I left for my most recent mission. They hurt me."

"What did he say?" she asked, non-judgmental, only wanting the story, or Anderson's interpretation of it.

"He was talking about--saying that I had changed. That he didn't know who I was anymore. Just because I wasn't some," he struggled with his anger and his words as that night came back to him again, "because I'd suddenly gotten more confident and more willing to make hard decisions without... confabbing with a ton of people about it."

"All right, so he says what to you, exactly?" she asked. "Because I'm still only hearing what you think he said, what he was implying to you."

Anderson calmed and tried to think of Keith's exact words. "He said I was reckless, cocky. He-he said I wasn't even," he cleared his throat, sticky sweet with alcohol and soda syrup, "He-he said I wasn't even me anymore." Anderson couldn't describe how he'd felt when Keith had said those words. A lot of Anderson's issues were tied up in identity and who he was versus who he wanted to be. He can't really remember the person he was before his father died, but he knew the person after was obsessed with independence, with being able to take care of himself, to live his life without relying on the input and opinions of others. And maybe it was strange to have chosen public service after that revelation of character, but Anderson had learned that duty and service did not mean he was any less his own person. He'd thought of his increased confidence in himself as the culmination of that quest. To have his lover so easily call it into question had ravaged him, made him question what it was he wanted.

_Safety_, he thought to himself. Wasn't that what he'd told everyone in his book? When you lose a parent so early, it feels like the world will never be safe again. Independence meant safety. The way he'd felt the past few months, he'd felt safe, in control. But his unauthorized jaunt, his reemerged nightmares, his treatment of Keith, assured him that it was an illusion, a mockery. No real safety would have taken his lover and given him more nightmares.

"I thought-I thought I needed to be that way. It felt good to be that way. Safe."

"But it wasn't?"

"It did make me reckless," he admitted quietly, not looking at her. "He was so upset when I got hurt again. And I was just making jokes."

"Because you'd gotten away, because it wasn't as bad," she postulated.

He nodded a little, "Maybe. It was--it didn't feel like bravado. But then I had a nightmare. I didn't tell Keith what it was about but that latest beating, well, kinda took center stage."

"So, Keith called you out and instead of being a grown-up about it, you decided to hurt him back," Rachel said.

"That's the sum of it, yeah," he said quietly. He shook his head, "I was just so... angry, anxious, I don't know. But I didn't want to think about it."

He drained his drink and looked away, "I still don't."

*****

Coming home from work was no longer the anticipated event that it was. He frequently stayed at work even later now, going in early, trying to escape the emptiness of the apartment. He tossed his keys and mail on the counter and pulled a Coke from the refrigerator. He cracked the can open and downed half of it in one go.

Just because he was going in early and coming home late didn't mean he didn't spend the intervening hours castigating himself. The caffeine ensured that he stayed up long enough to get a good admonishment in.

He threw some take-out on a plate and put in the microwave before sighing and starting on the mail. He placed the package aside, figuring Keith was sending him his keys, and opened up the various bills. He didn't know why some of these companies insisted on wasting paper on him since he did all his bill-paying online anyway--hard to pay bills sometimes when you're a spy. He threw the paper aside and pulled the package over. He tore the side off and flipped it over, but instead of the jingles of keys, a CD case fell out.

He furrowed his brow and looked inside the package before carefully placing it aside. Heart pounding, he reached over and pulled open a drawer, pulling at some rubber gloves that he kept in the kitchen for handling fresh meat. He slipped them on and picked up the cd case. He couldn't see any fingerprints, but that didn't mean there weren't other particulates. He had a very bad feeling about this.

He sprang into action. He pulled open all the drawers 'til he found the candles Keith had insisted they get for power outages. He then, apologizing silently to his mother, pulled one of her porcelain plates from the sideboard. He dumped a little starch powder onto a regular plate and lit the candle, holding it to the porcelain. As the soot began to form he scraped it onto the plate next to the starch. When he had two piles he grabbed an unused barbeque sauce brush from the drawer and mixed the two. He then skimmed the powder-covered brush lightly over the CD case, the CD it contained, and the package, but no fingerprint made it self known. He sighed and put the CD in the stereo and turned up the volume.

_"Mr. Cooper,"_ said a cultured British voice. _"It will interest you to know that we've... taken into our custody someone of interest to you. Now, this person can be released, but only upon your capitulation to us. You see, Mr. Cooper, myself and my colleagues are not particularly pleased with your recent meddling in our little organization. We are not generally a vengeful people, however your presence has been judged as a pestilence, one which we must rid ourselves of before you do anything worse. You will meet us Friday the second at Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding. There is a smaller storage facility, Building M-10, Newport News, Virginia. I would think very hard before bringing any kind of back up. We will know."_

The CD slowed to a stop. Anderson couldn't breathe. He reached for his Blackberry and quickly hit the the first speed-dial.

"Hello?"

"Mom?"

"Yes, Anderson, what's wrong?" she asked, which meant he must have sounded more desperate than he knew.

"You're okay?"

"I'm fine, Anderson, what is this about?"

"I'll--I, I need to make a call, Mom, take care of yourself, okay?" He hung up and hit speed-dial two.

It rang and rang. His stomach was turning as the voicemail picked up. _"This is Keith, can't get to the phone right now, leave a message."_

The recorded voice came back on but Anderson didn't wait for the beep. He hung up and called Keith's office phone and his apartment's land line, but there was no answer at either. He forced himself to calm down and grabbed his keys.

There was no answer at Keith's apartment and Keith had never given him a key since he had de facto moved into Anderson's apartment. He called Rachel.

"Have you heard from Keith?" he asked, not bothering with pleasantries.

"Uh, no, not since the toss. What's up?"

He swallowed. "I-could you call him? Call his cell? Maybe he's just not picking up my number."

"Yeah, gimme a sec, I'll call you back."

He waited outside the building, getting suspicious looks from the door man and checking his Blackberry every few seconds. It rang once before he hit the answer button.

"Yeah?"

"He's not picking up any of his phones. Where are you?"

"I went up to his apartment, there was no answer. There's only one explanation. Rachel, I need to ask you to not mention Keith's absence to anyone. I need you to cover for him."

"Cover for him? What--?"

"I'm fairly certain he's in danger and I need you to keep quiet."

"He's in danger and you're worried about being outed? What the fuck--?"

"Rachel, getting anyone else involved will spell death for Keith, okay? They want me and they knew just how to get me. They see anyone else on this they kill him."

"You know this for fact?"

"It's my job to know that." He hung up before she could protest further, trusting that her big brain would figure out on its own how to effectively cover for Keith. He paged through his address list to Bond's line.

"Bond," he answered succinctly. It sounded like he was on the street.

"Keith has been abducted, he's still in the U.S. but I need back-up," he pleaded.

"I can't legally operate in the United States," Bond told him. "Not after Miami. And technically, neither can you, but somehow I think you don't care. However, I have a contact for you. His name is Felix Leiter, he's CIA, you can trust him. If you're still unsure, trust me."

*****

Felix Leiter was not a lean man, but he carried himself in a way that promised that a lean torso and runners' legs had little to do with being able to handle one's self. He was as expressionless as most secret agents but managed to pull it off as an effortless state, rather than one that was necessary given his profession. More importantly, he didn't dress as Bond did. His suit wasn't ill made, but it was not the tailored masterpieces he and Bond preferred. Now, his lover--ex-lover--missing, Anderson was glad that the man possessed the good sense to look inconspicuous. He sipped on bottled beer and peeled at the soggy label. Anderson went to the bar and ordered his own beer before joining the man at the bar table. He loosened his tie and pulled off his suit jacket looking, for all the world, like a businessman who was only looking to de-stress from work.

In reality, his heart was beating a mile a minute, his mind stuck on the people who had taken Keith. They had no remorse. They would not get scared. They wanted Anderson and if he couldn't find another way to get Keith back, he wouldn't hesitate to turn himself over. A brash, bold move, one of the most dangerous--and valuable--he could make.

"James hasn't been too forthcoming about this," Leiter started.

"My-my lover has been abducted in an attempt to come at me. I've crossed these people, the same ones you and Section Chief Beam dealt with, too many times. They want my head and if I can't get to him... I'm tempted to give it to them," Anderson told him. "They're operating in the U.S., we know that much. But I need help. I need the C.I.A.'s help."

"You work for MI-6 instead of your own country and you want us to help you?" Leiter asked, and though his expression didn't change, his brown eyes took on a flinty gleam.

"I went to the ones who wanted me for something more than keeping a desk warm," Anderson defended himself, too worried and too strained to attempt civility or explanation.

"And we don't have an equivalency to Double-O status," Leiter said softly. "I know better than to ask whether you enjoy killing people, Mr. Cooper, but one can't help wondering. Only those destined for Double-O go through the rigorous recruitment and training you went through."

"I do what I must, Mr. Leiter," Anderson said simply.

Leiter took a look around the bar. "Since my promotion I've been looking into Quantum as much as I can. Beam was fired for being an embarrassment, but that doesn't mean my superiors aren't willing to deal with these people. Beam got caught, that was his only real mistake. As far as I can tell they're operating in all levels of government here, which doesn't even begin to touch on their corporate influence. Lockheed, Pfizer, any number of utility companies, and that's to name a few."

"C.I.A.? F.B.I.? N.S.A.?" Anderson asked. Leiter was nodding.

"At least the former two, can't be sure about N.S.A.. Those bastards are tighter-lipped than we are. They give you any indication of where he might be? Who exactly is responsible?"

Anderson took a deep breath and recalled the tape. "English voice. But it wasn't Mr. White, the one we're familiar with. I thought maybe it would be Westberg, but he's not that smart."

"Hate to remind you of this, but you are on T.V. and your relationship with Olbermann is common knowledge among those who actually give a shit," Leiter said, taking a long pull on his beer.

Anderson sipped from his, wincing at the bitterness of the brew. "They didn't know who I was. We eavesdropped on a meeting, they had no idea who I was."

"Doesn't mean someone can't put two and two together," Leiter said harshly. "I'm not sure why they let you get away with these assignments, but you can be damn sure they wouldn't fly here."

"Which is why I don't operate here," Anderson responded with steel in his voice. "Are you going to help me or not?"

Leiter gave him a long stare before draining his beer in one go. He stood and threw some cash on the table. Anderson finished his own beer and followed him. They emerged onto the street, wet with a recent storm, and stood among the groups of smokers and cab hailers.

"My research is entirely under the table, but I've been able to pinpoint a couple areas of operation for these scumbags," Leiter said lowly. "I'll give you this information on one condition."

"Name it," Anderson said immediately.

"You let me in on whatever op you get going."

It wasn't a shocking question and yet Anderson wasn't fully prepared for it. He had been counting on going into this alone. Keith, and what had happened to him, were entirely his own responsibility and he recognized the complete foolishness of some of his behavior over the past few months. He couldn't afford a slip-up. He needed help.

"Done," Anderson announced.

*****

Felix's, for he had asked to be called by his first name, computer was set up with so many firewalls that Anderson was fairly certain not even the best hacker could make his way through the labyrinthine protections he had in place. When he mentioned this, Felix had shot him a bright half-grin and waggled his eyebrows.

"Helps to have them on the payroll, then, huh?"

It beckoned a surprise laugh out of Anderson. Of course the C.I.A. had hackers on the payroll.

"They test all our systems, we give them the good stuff to play with. After 9-11 it was made clear to us, time and again by a couple of these guys, that we were woefully under-protected from cyber-attacks. Most were still living in the seventies and eighties when the only way to get information was to be on the street, to meet the guy who knew a guy. Then all these upstart kids start hacking the system. Most of 'em didn't want anything. They left messages, videos, nearly harmless viruses. A few of our own cyber-whizzes managed to track a few down and we hired them on. I doubt MI-6 could find its way in at this point."

"I've no doubt about that," Anderson said, amused. MI-6 still relied heavily on a human element, chatroom conversations with true believers being more the exception than the rule. Many terrorists didn't have a blog or a Twitter or a computer for that matter. Those who did were smart enough to keep such information under heavy wraps. 'The guy who knew a guy' routine was still in substantial use.

"We managed to find one guy working for them in the Agency, but he was a gopher, a new guy who could barely find his ass with two hands and a flashlight. He told us what he knew, which wasn't much, but we were able to extrapolate quite a bit from it." He double clicked a file and entered a series of passwords before a list popped up on the screen. "From his information we were able to guess on a few of the corporations, a few of the physical holdings, these guys were in charge of. These are storage facilities, freight yards, water company sites, too many power plants than I like to think about. What are the odds they kept him near New York?"

"Keith is a bit... cumbersome," Felix snorted. "Let's narrow it there, check it out and go from there. They told me to meet them in Virginia, but they could transport him easily," Anderson suggested. "He's got to still be in the country. They wouldn't have him too far away. Plus that makes it extra difficult for me to operate."

"They don't know about me," Felix went through and highlighted the places that would be relevant and opened a new window. The places were then broken into several descending menus. Felix flicked through them quickly, dismissing some, setting aside others.

"All right, I've set aside those places that are generally abandoned, but unpatrolled by security of any kind."

"But if these guys own these places--"

"You really think lugging around a guy against his will isn't going to make a few heads turn, no matter who owns the place?" Felix asked.

Anderson wasn't sure.

"We can't check out all of these places by ourselves," Felix told him.

"What do you suggest? I don't want to get more people than necessary involved."

"One of our computer hotshots, guy I brought in, can hack into the camera feeds," he pointed out the icon that indicated that the places were surveyed.

"All right, get him down here."

*****

The warehouse was empty, as was the the port distribution center, and the abandoned freight yard. They tried a dozen more sites. There was no sign of any activity. Felix let out a sigh of frustration.

"We've hacked into all the cameras these facilities have," said the hacker. "There's no indication of any kind of activity. No cars, no movement, and I'd need the tapes to know if they've just stashed him there."

Anderson kicked the desk with frustration, causing the equipment to rattle. "This is taking too long! We have three days to figure this out and we're wasting time on guesses."

Felix took hold of his elbow and pulled him across the room. Lit only by computers, Felix looked serious and stared at him until Anderson let out a long sigh and looked down at his feet.

"You need to calm down. You need to think. What's the next step?"

Anderson took a couple deep breaths and closed his eyes.

"Bring it to the ground," he said. "We've gotta bring it to the ground."

"Known associates," Felix nodded. "You would recognize people?"

"Yeah, yes," he said, nodding. "But, the only people likely to know are those near the top."

Felix shrugged, "So let's go get 'em."

*****

Julian Westberg's lawyers were the best in the world. Once his company learned of his incarceration with MI-6 they had brought to bear a lawsuit that made the Prime Minister turn tail and run straight to his Foreign Minister who, in turn, released Westberg.

Heller and White Pharmaceuticals had the man on a plane for America before the ink on his release papers had dried. Apparently, the Bush Administration had given out diplomatic immunity like Christmas bonuses and Westberg's had yet to be revoked by the Obama Administration. Anderson had serious doubts Obama even knew what was going on with Quantum.

In the end, it took little more than a Google search to find him in the United States. Little more than that to secure him and get him to a location where none of his lackeys could find him.

His face was swollen and bloodied and Anderson hadn't even hit him. Felix was reclined against the opposite wall, face impassive, posture tense, but hardly ready to jump in, whether it was to stop Anderson or get in a few hits of his own. Anderson cracked his knuckles, stiff with frustration and anger. Westberg was smiling, laughing with his teeth coated in blood. He spit a few times to clear his mouth.

"So much more satisfying to take personal revenge than professional," he said, voice thick and amused. "Your care for your job is superficial, but this man... he means more."

"Where is he?" Anderson asked again.

"You think because you have a government behind your name you have some special power? Some special morality? You're just like us. You kill and you torture and you do it to get what you want. I tell you where he is.... what do I get from it?"

"Besides your life?" Anderson asked.

"I tell you, I lose my life anyway. These people are not stupid, Mr. Cooper, they will come after me with as much mercy as you have gone after us."

"Anderson," Felix said. Anderson gave Westberg a long look before walking over to Felix. "He's right, you know, nothing we do to him will be anything more than what they will do to him. Greene proved that much. A breach in the organization calls for termination."

"So, how do we get this information?" Anderson whispered, harshly. "If we can't get information from him, we are shit out of luck and I'm not--"

"Let me try, all right?"

They shared a long look before Anderson stood back, allowing Felix to come forward.

"Listen, Westberg, gonna let you in on a little secret here," Felix said, sitting backwards on the chair in front of him. "Your organization kills that man? They won't stop til they've gotten all of you. If Anderson were to turn himself over? You all might have the money, but he's got the name, he's got the following, and in the end the public isn't going to give a shit about you and whatever he does to you. One flash of those baby blues and he's the innocent again. A word in the right ears... a little creative writing? You could still be CEO of Heller and White at the end of this debacle instead of dead and thrown in the local dumpster."

"You are willing to ensure my survival, my protection, solely for this information?"

"Are you willing to give us this information?" Felix deflected.

Westberg seemed to consider the question.

"I don't think I can trust you with this," he said, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

Anderson stepped forward and pulled Felix away. "All right, I'm done playing your fucking games. They say torture doesn't work, they say a rapport needs to be established. I'll establish a rapport. Tie him to the table, Felix."

He didn't stop to question what he was doing. He watched Felix manhandle the man onto the nearby table, securing his limbs, as he himself pulled out his knife.

"Your man in Pakistan was quite gifted," Anderson began conversationally. "Was versed in how to cause pain and how to make it _stick_." He took the blade and dug it sharply into the soft, fleshy underside of Westberg's arm, deliberately missing arteries, pinching nerves. Westberg, predictably, screamed. CEOs, he had found, were rarely equipped to deal with torture.

And it was torture. Of that, Anderson was very well aware.

"I had the distinct pleasure of having drugs to make the experience ever so much more memorable," he said, moving to Westberg's feet. "But his goal was only pain, only humiliation." The knife slid easily into the tender flesh of the large arch. Westberg was screaming as Anderson worked it in, pulled it up, cutting through connective tissue, moving towards the arch between the toes. He stopped between the big toe and second toe. Westberg was sobbing lightly, pulling breath into his lungs like he'd run a marathon. But he wasn't talking.

Anderson grit his teeth and shook his head a little. He pulled the knife out harshly and quickly ran it across the back of the foot, severing the Achilles tendon, listening to Westberg choke on a breathless scream. "That was some improvisation. I'm not really that good at staying on script. Now, tell me where he is."

"All right!" Westberg sobbed, "I'll tell you, I'll tell you."

Anderson's hands barely moved. "And I should trust what you would tell me out of pain? Numerous studies have shown that torture is not an effective means of extracting information."

"Then why are you _asking_ me!?"

Anderson cocked his head, "Revenge? Sadism? Maybe, I'm just naive enough to think it will work. After all, when have you had to deal with so much as a hang nail? I can tell by your scream, that incredulous look on your face, you're not used to pain. You haven't had your hands smashed or your legs torn open or your scrotum electrocuted."

Westberg was practically whimpering as Anderson spoke, his lip curling involuntarily in an expression of disgust and fear. He took a deep shuddering breath and turned away. Felix was still there, face still emotionless. He closed his eyes against disparate images, one laid on top of another, his own mangled feet, watching Jon/Rush rip through them, Westberg's feet, lily white, now torn to shreds. He remembered his shattered hands and could practically feel his then, healed, wrapping around the hilt of a mallet, ready to do the same to Westberg. Just to know where Keith was. Because if there was anything Anderson had figured out, it was that Keith wasn't getting out of this alive, whether he turned himself over or not.

The thought of what Keith would think, seeing what Anderson had done made him step way. What he had done for _him_ and that would sicken him more. He dropped the knife and moved away. "Felix, get him cleaned up and get him out of here," he said, voice hoarse.

There was rustling behind him, dressing of wounds, retrieval of clothing and the groans and sharp breaths of a man in pain. He closed his eyes against it, wiping his bloodied hands on the dark fabric of his pants. His lips were dry and he absentmindedly wet them. He heard Felix escorting the man to the door.

"Cooper," Westberg suddenly said. Anderson didn't turn, only allowed his head to acknowledge him. "Wurtland Riverport, Kentucky. I can tell you no more than that."

Anderson closed his eyes and nodded. "Thank you," he said softly.


	9. How'd You Learn to Do the Things You Do?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How did he become who he is? It had very little to do with what he's told the world.

The drive through Virginia and West Virginia was long and tiresome. Thirty minutes in Felix had insisted on music, but it wasn't exactly conducive to keeping Anderson awake. He rested his head on a fist and looked out into the black, his recent near-fall from grace pressing into his fore brain. Begging for acknowledgment

After Felix had seen Westberg away, Anderson had taken a few steps into the shadows and puked his guts up. Felix had come back and stood with him.

"What was I doing?" he had whispered, plaintively. "What the fuck was I thinking?"

"You were thinking you'd do anything to save your lover," Felix had said.

Anderson had shaken his head violently. "Save him at the expense of him? 'Cause that's all this is going to do if I save him. Drive him further away. God, what's _wrong_ with me?"

The first time Anderson had killed someone he had been in Bosnia and he had been meeting with a contact in a Serb-controlled area. It was a quiet moment in the war, a night without explosions or the ever present pop of sniper fire. He had been walking out in the streets without his "guide" and hadn't once felt the presence of a target on his back.

They sat in a darkened room, one candle for light, and exchanged information. And then a man had come in and tried to strangle Anderson to death with a length of chain. His contact had left calmly, apologizing softly. Anderson had grasped the chain and pulled and pulled, but the man was strong and before he knew it there were spots before his eyes. He couldn't reach his gun, stashed with his bag a few feet away. He struggled to his knees and heaved as best he could. The man cursed and tumbled over his shoulder, dislodging the chain. It hadn't deterred him long and he'd drawn a nasty looking knife from his boot and started slashing at Anderson. Anderson had jumped back out of the way and grabbed a nearby "table" and threw it at his assailant. It stunned him, momentarily, and Anderson drew the gun he'd never used and fired a bullet into his chest.

It had sounded remarkably loud, he remembered. And bright. The candle had been knocked over in the scuffle and in the pervading darkness the muzzle flash made after sparks in Anderson's eyes. But there was no movement from the man he'd shot and no one came running. His hands had shook as he'd drawn out the satellite phone and called the death into MI-6. A clean-up team would take care of it and Anderson would return to London to address his superiors about the death. Back then, there had been no license to kill that allowed Anderson to kill with impunity beyond M's personal punishments for being overzealous.

Killing was not easy, it shouldn't have been. But he did recognize that it was easier for him than for others. He had tried to explain it to Keith once. His lover wasn't able to wrap his mind around the concept. Keith tried to equate it to the death penalty for those who would never see the inside of a courtroom, but Anderson stopped that train of thought right there. His job was hardly so clean. He had killed for politically expedient reasons, he had killed for treason, he had killed for no other reason than someone was in the way. Keith always seemed extremely discomfited when he had learned of any death Anderson had had a hand in in the news. He would sit in the room while Anderson cleaned and polished his weapons, but never picked up one himself. Anderson had told Keith that this was what he did and that that wasn't going to change. Keith seemed to accept that, but Anderson wondered if maybe, despite the beginning of their relationship occurring only after he had revealed his secret identity, Keith had a bigger problem with it than he had let on. Anderson may have acknowledged that the past few months had been, well, had been different, but that didn't mean he didn't see some culpability on Keith's part.

Anderson had accepted that there was something different inside of him, maybe something inhuman? _"Can't have you running off, can we? Gotta face up to your crimes, man."_ He jerked his head briefly, as if away from the memory. Maybe he was a little inhuman, but for now, people like him needed to exist. Or maybe people like him just made things easier. He lived by a different set of morals and principles and one didn't take this job to right the wrongs of the world. People like Keith went through life without having laid eyes on a gun, or death, or real evil. It was separate from them, in newspapers, on TV, half a world away. Anderson hadn't even had to venture out of Connecticut.

Midnight in New Haven, Connecticut was no time to be walking around alone, but on his way back from a bar on one of the rare nights he took off from the gym or studying, it seemed the best option. He had been a little tipsy, enough for a floating, buzzing feeling under his feet and in his face. There were others on the street and while some looked unsavory, none looked like they were to visit harm upon his own person. He tread lightly, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets.

He had been near campus, perhaps only a few blocks, when a man caught his eye. There was nothing extraordinary about him only that his gaze, his walk, was that of a predator. Anderson had not been out in the world over-much, but the second semester of his senior year had been spent in Sub-Saharan Africa, and he had learned predators were not just the ones with big teeth and an eye for lunch. Unnoticed, he had followed the man, tracking through streets and alleyways, but losing him again and again until he was completely lost.

And then he had found the body. A young man, possibly a student at Yale given his clothing, lying in a pool of blood, thick and cloying. Very obviously dead, savaged more like. Anderson had stood, motionless, wanting to be sick, but then the spine-chilling intuition that he was being watched, that the person who had murdered the man in front of him was still there, watching. He had turned slowly in place, his face perfectly blank, eyes scanning the dark shadows of the dank alley.

Nothing struck at him and the feeling disappeared.

The only people who knew about that night were his suite mates and the cops that had questioned him. All had sworn never to speak of it. Anderson had spent the next two days throwing up whenever he thought of the scene and later, when he'd made agent, when he thought back onto that incident he wondered if it had been his test.

He wondered if he was failing that test now.

_"It's you. For some reason, this new you. So bold, so confident, so fucking brash. It's like you're not you, anymore."_

Those words were proving to have some serious sticking power.

*****

Maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising to someone who had traveled the world like Anderson had, but stepping out into the mountain air of Eastern Kentucky he was surprised at how much warmer it was, how very far away from home he felt. They had parked on the other side of the river from Wurtland Riverport. Anderson and Felix parked on the street and hauled a lightweight canoe from the top of the car. They strapped their gear to their backs, picked up the canoe and made their way through the fields to the river.

It was dark as oil without proper lighting. The ambient lighting from what few homes and businesses lined the river weren't enough to illuminate them as they set out across the river. This canoe had been made for soundless travel. So long as their oars cut the water correctly, the canoe would make no sound as it glided through the water that tried to push them downstream. They stowed their gear in the middle and then pushed off. Anderson took the front position, ready with a gun and a pair of binoculars. Felix steered them. Through the binoculars, Anderson could see no movement on the other side of the river. They weren't expecting trouble. They weren't expecting one of their own to turn on them.

"Anything?"

"Clear," Anderson told him. "There are lights on in the port facility, but they're dim. I can't see any movement within."

They reached the other bank swiftly, pulling the canoe up and gathering their gear. A knife stowed here, a gun there, and their feet covered with a soft mesh that allowed them to move soundlessly across wet grass and up into the Wurtland Riverport Campus. Westberg hadn't given them much to work with and the properties were extensive. They moved quickly, looking for signs of habitation or activity.

"I'm gonna put my money on that warehouse," Felix said, pointing toward a nearby facility. It was at least twenty thousand square feet and completely unremarkable. Anderson wondered aloud what made Felix choose it.

"Tire treads," he said, pointing to the unpaved road. There were at least three distinct patterns. Two SUVs and a sedan, if Anderson had to guess from the impressions.

"There's no way we can get in there with stealth," he said, gesturing to the large garage doors and the smaller doors all around. "What's the inside like?"

"It's a warehouse, Anderson," Felix said dryly. He put his backpack down and pullled out a FLIR. "We need some idea of where they are."

Anderson stared at him. "You know, we could've used that to find the right building in the first place."

Felix just gave him a look and switched the technology on. Instantly, a picture, bright with green, was bounced back. And there, near the front of the facility, were nine or so red blobs. Humans.

"I think we've hit pay dirt," Anderson said.

"I'd say that's a pretty accurate description," said a cockney accent from behind them. They whipped around glaring at the guard who had them at gunpoint. "Good bit o' detective work there, but not quite good enough. Thought you boys were s'posed to be smart?"

Anderson's anger, simmering so close to the surface, lashed out hotly and he, possibly foolishly, whipped an arm around swiftly, knocking the man's gun arm. His fist caught the man in the throat and while Felix wrenched the gun from the guard's hand, Anderson pulled him forward and jammed his foot in the back of his knee, making the other man buckle. Felix turned and brought the gun down hard on the back of the guard's head and he crumpled to the ground.

They were hardly winded, but their eyes were wide. They had been too careless, reckless even, to think that there would be no outside guard. A few hand gestures and they were circling the building. Anderson didn't come across anyone, but by the time he met with Felix, the other agent had another guard unconscious on the ground. He was palming a walkie-talkie.

"You'd think they'd go with something more high-tech than you could find at Radio Shack," Felix said, hushed.

They tied up both guards together and then approached one of the rear entrances to the warehouse.

"So cliche," Felix muttered to himself.

The door was locked but easily picked. Felix turned the knob slowly, silently before easing the door out enough to peak inside. This part of the warehouse was almost completely dark but for the light that filtered from the front. They couldn't hear anything, but cautiously, they moved inside. Their guns were drawn and Anderson could feel himself slipping away from "concerned boyfriend" and into his role as an agent. Keith was no longer "Keith," he was the mission. Boxes rose up all around them and a discrete sniff told Anderson that at least some of those boxes contained marijuana.

"That's how Westberg knew," he whispered to Felix. "It's his facility."

"Kentucky is one of the largest producers of marijuana in the United States," Felix said.

"Exactly."

The distance to the front of the warehouse was enough that only the loudest of noises would draw out the men in the office. None patrolled the actual warehouse--folly for them, but lucky for Anderson and Felix--and Anderson could see why as they began navigating their way forward. It was a maze of boxes with large clear spaces and then stacks to the ceiling. It took them over five minutes to get near the front.

The office was like something out of every comic book Anderson had read as a kid where the mob bosses and their flunkies would take the damsel in distress and sound off on their plans while the superhero sat and listened outside. The walls were almost entirely made up of windows, some of them open, and light and cigarette smoke poured out. Shadows of the men who held Keith moved within. Rough laughs rang off metal walls and throughout the partially empty warehouse. He gestured Felix forward and they crept, crouched, to the open windows. He didn't catch his breath, his eyes didn't widen, he had no reaction as he beheld Keith, tied up and slumped on the floor. He was thoroughly disheveled, hair falling everywhere and suit jacket torn, but he didn't appear to be hurt. The men had guns, lots of them and that was going to be a problem if he wanted to get Keith _and_ himself out of this situation alive. He backed away and met Felix back behind a large stack of boxes marked "shipping supplies."

"There's no way we can take all of them," Felix said, looking grave. "Not without this turning into a serious stand-off."

"I can only see one way around it," Anderson said. "You'll have to draw them out."

"How the hell do I do that?"

"The walkie talkies," Anderson said, quickly. "Go out, call for reinforcements or something. I can handle whoever is left."

Felix gave him a long look. "You about went off the deep end with Westberg, Cooper. What makes you think you can go in there and be the cold-blooded agent you were trained to be?"

Anderson favored him with a smirk. "It's the mission, not the man." It was a kind of mantra, for the agent. Thinking of your mission as anything but a series of executable actions led to murky moral waters and too heavy of involvement on the part of the agent. Case in point: Anderson's pursuance of Westberg. Bond's quest to hunt down the men who had made Vesper Lynd's death an inevitability, rather than a tragic accident. Here, tonight, Keith was a mission. Not a man.

"All right then," Felix said with a nod. He sneaked out of the side doors and Anderson took position, watching the office, but hidden in the shadows.

Minutes later a flurry of movement indicated Felix had made contact and four of the eight men guarding Keith made for the door. The others would be on hyper-alert now. Anderson would have to move quickly. He fell into a crouch and tip-toed forward to a window. From this vantage he could get two shots off. The other two were on his part of the wall.

He didn't need to pep-talk himself. He fired twice, his gun moving minutely, instant kill shots a careful flick of the wrist and both were on the ground. He reminded himself that this wasn't about revenge. He rose then, the other men were shouting and going toward the door. Anderson met them there. The gun was knocked from his hands, and he quickly blocked the meaty fist on its way to his face and fired off a punch with his now gun-less hand. It barely made a dent, but it caught the man by surprise. He turned slightly and shoved a sharp elbow into the fleshy underside of the man's sternum. He grunted and doubled over and Anderson brought both fists down on his back to take him all the way down.

A sharp whistle and pain caught him in the stomach. A muffled yell that could've been his name issued from Keith's bound mouth.

He gritted his teeth past the pain and aimed a kick at the man's wrist. The gun flew from his spasming hand and Anderson surged forward, punching him in the face and stomach. The man was a better fighter than his counterpart though and he used his instinctive reaction, doubling over, to hit Anderson in his new wound. Anderson cried out a little and tried to get a knee into any of the man's fleshy parts, but the other man drove him backwards and he landed hard against a window, shattering the glass. The man straightened and and proceeded to use Anderson's dazed state to beat the ever-loving fuck out of him. Anderson could barely block the blows, much less get one of his own in edgewise. He shook his head, like a cartoon, and blocked another series of blows before stepping on the man's instep. Another well-placed knee went in the man's groin and as he stumbled back, Anderson grabbed for the nearest thing at hand--an ancient PC it turned out--and threw it at the man. He didn't go down, but staggered further. Anderson picked up the keyboard next, swinging it up into the man's face. He's smacked him again and then jammed it into his stomach. He took a few precious seconds to drop and roll across the floor, scrambling for his gun and turned just as the man retrieved his own, shooting him right between the eyes.

He was a little winded, his belly was on fire, and Keith was in the corner raising what might have been holy hell but for the gag in his mouth. Anderson tucked the gun into his holster and pulled a knife. He snapped Keith's restraints and pulled the gag from his mouth.

"He shot you!" Keith exclaimed.

"That hadn't escaped my notice," Anderson said dryly. He was only bleeding profusely, though you couldn't tell against the black of his clothes. "We have to go, Felix will be waiting."

"Who the hell is Felix?" Keith asked, helping Anderson from his crouch. Anderson didn't admit to needing his help, but accepted the arm around his waist all the same.

"CIA agent, he helped me find you," Anderson ground out.

They stumbled out into the night and Felix was waiting for them, bodies strewn the ground. Keith was looking at them, but Anderson ignored them in favor of steering Keith in the direction of the boat.

When he saw the canoe, Keith stopped in his tracks.

"Wait one fucking second. Are you serious? He's bleeding to death and we're gonna _row_ across a river?" he asked, incredulous.

Anderson and Felix both favored him with a withering look. "It's not as if we can call an ambulance, Keith," Anderson told him. "Felix can fix me up adequately enough when we get back to the car. From there we can go to a hospital."

He was losing blood fast and consciousness would soon elude him as well. He let Keith and Felix settle him in the middle before they took up the oars. The journey back across the river seemed interminable and Anderson was actually surprised when they reached the bank. They heaved him out and while Felix dug out the first aid kit, Keith crouched next to him.

"Nice rescue," he said, softly.

"Well, you're useless on your own," Anderson told him. "I couldn't leave you. They would have killed you right in front of me, Keith. Neither of us would have left that shipyard alive."

"Shipyard?" Keith asked.

"It was a trade. You for me. But they had no intention of letting you leave."

"I didn't think they did," Keith said lowly, and then pressed his hands to the belly wound. "Am I doing this right?"

Anderson let a huff of a laugh, "Yeah, yeah."

He looked Keith over and finally noticed a dried trickle of blood near Keith's temple. "You're bleeding," he said, words slow and stupid.

Keith favored him with an exasperated look. It made Anderson smile a little.

He wanted to say more. Wanted to let all the things that had been wandering through his brain for the past couple weeks rush out and overwhelm Keith as they had overwhelmed him. But he couldn't get his mouth to cooperate and he couldn't get his brain to engage. His limbs were weak and shaky and he felt the blood drain from his face. He lost consciousness looking up at a clear black sky, full of stars and Keith's giant head, blue eyes narrowed with concern.


	10. Intermission Three: You'll Never Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith has never seen Anderson in action. He's not entirely sure that was knowledge he could live without.

Keith woke up in the back of a moving vehicle.

"Goddamnit, Anderson," he grumbled, though he suspected it sounded more like gibberish. He blinked his eyes a few times and attempted to get his bearings. It was a fairly nice SUV and that was about the extent of what he could ascertain. Some kind of privacy screen was up between him and the cab and he was hog-tied quite efficiently. Possibly to keep him from making the idiotic mistake of trying to jump out the back.

He let his head drop back to the floor. Thank heaven for small favors, there was carpeting. And, in a moment of deja-vu, decided losing consciousness again was really the best thing he could do in this situation.

*****

He was dragged, probably hours later, from the back and hoisted between some very muscular men and deposited in an office and proceeded to laze around looking appropriately menacing.

All kidding aside, he was fairly alarmed. Anderson hadn't told him anything about his previous mission, though he had guessed a few of the particulars, and now he was left with the very acute feeling that he had missed something. He had guessed that the mission Anderson was so keen to finish up, to be a part of, was related to what had happened last year. He had also deduced that these men were somehow involved with that business. But to what end, he didn't know.

His musings were interrupted by gunshots and he startled at the brightness of the muzzle flash, the laughter of the men who had put shots into the motivational posters along the wall that wasn't made up of windows. The holes were smoking. Head shots, every single one.

The taste in the back of his mouth was sickly sweet, like diluted powdered sugar, and he wondered briefly if he'd been poisoned. But no, that wasn't why they wanted him. He was bait, he was the consequence. And he had no fucking doubt that Anderson would turn himself over in a heartbeat to keep Keith safe. And they would make him pay for whatever it was he had done to their organization.

And suddenly the taste in the back of his mouth was the sour-sweet of hastily swallowed sick.

And then he heard one of the men talking about how he would defile Anderson, miming lewd acts with his gun to the entertainment of his fellows. Keith leaned over and was sick. His throat went raw and stung from the sour taste.

"Oh, lovely, he's left a mess to clean up," said one voice.

"We should make him lick it up," another said, gruff and amused.

"That wouldn't really deal with the smell."

They drag him away from the mess and one of them is tasked to cleaning it up. The big guy, and he's at least as big as Keith with more muscles besides, pulls a ragged, smelly neckerchief from his back pocket and stuffs it in Keith's mouth, tying it at the back. Keith didn't even have a chance to bite him.

"There, you're sick again, you can just swallow it back down," he said.

All the vitriol Keith had ever composed in his time at Countdown could not match the spring of it that dearly wanted to pour out of his mouth then.

*****

He wasn't sure how long it had been. He'd fallen asleep at some point, strange conversation all around him. The men guarding him hadn't spoken of anything incriminating. On the whole they seemed to be most interested in 'that firecracker Jenny' and whether or not they would be getting food anytime soon. He felt useless as he felt the edges of his bonds, trying to figure out if there were any way to get out of them. Obviously, getting out of the Gordian knots he'd been secured in would only be the beginning of his problems. Even were all the men half his size and _not_ carrying firearms, Keith had few illusions about his physical prowess. Or lack thereof. He could do heavy lifting, but he wasn't exactly in the best of shape, otherwise.

He rolled his eyes remembering how many times his lackadaisical descent to middle-aged manhood had come up in arguments with Anderson.

He gathered that evening had fallen when a change of guard had come through bearing sacks of greasy burgers and fries complaining about rush hour and what they saw as the utter waste of resources, so many men guarding one out of shape old man.

That was fair, he thought self-deprecatingly.

He was not a gym bunny, not very fit at all compared to some men his own age. He didn't ride a bike or do lawn work or build decks from scratch. Anderson had offered to let him come out and work on his house, but Keith had balked. He really wasn't a do-it-yourself kind of guy. He could practically hear Anderson's snort of "that's for sure" in his head as he thought that.

All things considered, he and Anderson shouldn't have been so well suited. They sniped at each other, they were two opposite ends of the physical spectrum, two opposite ends of the temperament spectrum, and Keith wasn't that big of a believer in that "opposites attract" nonsense. Mostly, because if that were the case he and Bill O'Reilly should have been picking out linens at Bed, Bath and Beyond and arguing about red versus blue color schemes. Even the thought made him shudder. But with Anderson there was a kind of syzygy. For all that they ignored their issues and obfuscated their way through the real arguments, they were still enormously satisfied with each other. Had been enormously satisfied. And then they hadn't.

His rather melodramatic musings, he would not say "womanish" as the Rachel in his head would figuratively smack him, were interrupted by some kind of ruckus. Four of his guards were dispatched and the others closed ranks around him. Moments later Keith was aware of a small whine and two of them dropped where they stood. One fell nearly next to Keith and blood poured unabated from the bullet hole in his forehead. Keith wanted to vomit a little, but managed to hold it back.

The other two guards went for the door and were met by Anderson, looking as cold and furious as Keith had ever seen him. The gun in his hands was quickly stripped from him, but that didn't seem to deter him. He had never seen his ex-boyfriend in action, had never seen the training that had characterized so much of the life Keith had easily dismissed. Anderson moved sparingly and it was nothing like Keith had seen in the movies. The smack of flesh on flesh has none of the hollow echo and there was nothing beautiful or artful about the fights.

The sound of the gun made something in Keith curdle and he jerked in his bonds, completely involuntarily. A sound tried to escape his throat and he was aware again of the sick from earlier, burning like acid in his throat. Anderson staggered and while Keith couldn't see blood blooming against the black of his clothing, he could see the ragged tear.

Anderson had been shot. Right in front of him.

But his lover barely seemed to take note of it beyond of the reflexive jerk of his body. He kicked the gun from his assailant's hand and they proceeded to beat the ever-loving tar out of one another. Keith jerked and worked at his bonds, desperate to be free, to do _something_. Not to be the useless clod with no real strength and no real idea how to handle himself in a fight.

Anderson could be a thoughtless jackass, but Keith was really quite fond of him, all things considered.

The last guard finally fell to Anderson's bullet and Keith worked up a head of anger so hot he could feel it in his face.

Anderson was going to get an earful.

*****

"I can't believe they haven't asked any questions," Keith commented quietly to the stoic man who, he had learned, had been Anderson's partner in crime in his venture to rescue Keith.

"The right phone call can shut a lot of people up," Felix said. Keith already liked him better than Bond, if only because he seemed to have no sexual designs on Keith's ex-boyfriend.

"So, you're CIA?"

"Yes," he liked him better, but the fellow wasn't exactly chatty. He stood, stuffing hands on his pants. In the car he had changed clothing, had insisted Keith change as well. They had peeled Anderson out of his dark pants and stuffed him into a pair of sweatpants. They had needed to look unassuming and nothing about the outfits Anderson and Felix had been wearing was unassuming. In the hospital, the nurses had balked at first, the doctor had been stern and though he hadn't refused treatment, had been extremely uncooperative until Felix had put him on the phone with some mysterious person. Anderson's care had improved significantly after that conversation.

"Who were they?"

"Someone with a score to settle."

"I guess you can't actually tell me," he said, impatient and frustrated and confused. Anderson was still in surgery and that thought was doing very little good for his blood pressure. _"Which is high enough as it is, Keith."_ Anderson's voice came to him at completely understandable moments. Anderson had positively _cinematic_ timing.

"He crossed the wrong people trying to right the world's wrongs. He's one of the idealists. Thinks he can save the world. Save the world or change it," Felix said and it was as many words as he'd put together in Keith's presence that weren't comprised of gruff orders.  
"And he shouldn't try?"

"Of course he should. It makes him both stupid and invaluable. It's why he can do the things he does."

Keith let his head fall back onto the olive walls. He had never thought about what Anderson did. Not in any real way. He knew his job, knew what happened in the course of that job, knew why Anderson had, presumably, gone into service in the first place. But he had never thought to question what kind of person Anderson had to be for... all this, to be okay with him. And Anderson had never explained. They had accepted their strange relationship and the surreality of Anderson's double life, but they'd never _talked_ about it. Keith had serious misgivings about Anderson's "license to kill." He had been brought up with principles that guaranteed everyone a fair hearing and a fair punishment, but everything Anderson did circumvented that. He had killed four men before Keith's very eyes.

That it had been in an effort to save Keith's life was both inconsequential and entirely of consequence.

"He once told me that he was the least surprising figure to be found out as an agent, because he didn't have some deep-seeded love for his country," Keith said.

"He doesn't. You learn pretty early on that you can't think of the world in terms of countries in this job. Nations act in their own self-interest. People like Cooper have to look out for the world as a whole. Three years ago, the men who abducted you would have partnered with the CIA to support a coup d'etat that would have left a country penniless and on the verge of civil war. All for the United States' best interest."

"Big picture versus small picture."

"I've seen your show, Olbermann. You could give a shit what's happening beyond your sphere of political influence. You talk a good game, I'll give you that and I know you're not a heartless bastard that just doesn't care. But while you make fun of those nut jobs at FOX and call out politicians for being cowards or just plain batshit, you don't really think about the big picture."

Keith wanted to protest, opened his mouth to do so, but with one sharp look Felix cut him off.

"The best way to think about Anderson, the only way you're going to ever be able to understand him and what he does, is to let go of your preconceived notions of what is right and wrong."

"You think Anderson has the right to act on his own cognizance?"

"I think you have no idea how he feels about what he does. I think you have no idea how someone could remain perfectly sane and yet have committed the acts, what you might call crimes, that Anderson has. Anderson is a soldier. As much as the guy who puts on camouflage and patrols desert streets. If that's what it takes for you to understand him, go with that."

"He kills people."

"Yes, deliberately, in most cases." Felix rubbed a hand over his beard. "This isn't gonna fit in your worldview, Olbermann. You've just gotta deal with that."

*****

Anderson was already awake when Keith returned from getting coffee and dealing with demons. Felix had left when he had heard Anderson was all right, off to report to his and Anderson's superiors. The things he had said stuck with Keith and he knew that in some ways Felix was right. He had never adjusted himself after getting involved with Anderson. They had gone on in a casual way, like some bizarre Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Anderson was sitting upright, unflinchingly enduring the pokes and prods of the doctors and nurses. If they recognized him they didn't seem to care and Keith was sure to keep his head down and his comments to a minimum as they talked about rehab and wound cleaning and all manner of other things Keith vaguely recalled from the year before.

"So, this apparently is a bad time of year for you," Keith said flippantly when they were alone.

"I should consider hibernation," Anderson told him, shifting to get comfortable. "Are you okay?" he asked after a few minutes silence.

"I'm fine. Smell like vomit, blood, and what I have been informed is gunpowder, but otherwise, fine."

"Good," Anderson said and Keith didn't recognize the steel in his voice. It was then he realized that Anderson hadn't... decompressed or whatever it was he did before he saw Keith. Whatever mask or persona he put on to do his job was still firmly in place. Keith wondered if it was on purpose.

"So, those people--"

"Were after me. You were collateral damage," Anderson said. "We dealt their... organization a blow and they were looking for revenge. Since I was point man on two different operations against them, plus my extra-curricular activities, they went after me."

"Right." Keith felt entirely out of his depth, unable to find common ground with a man he'd lived with for nearly a year and been sleeping with for most of that.

"Anderson," he said, hesitantly. "Watching you... do those things--"

"Kill those men, Keith?" Anderson said, bluntly. "You have to say it, Keith. I killed them. In cold blood."

"Cold blood?" Keith asked, thinking that it had been passion, feeling for Keith that had driven Anderson.

"Yes, Keith."

Keith took a deep breath and exploded out of his seat. "I just don't get it! How can you--no, I'm not going to get anywhere with that question. Can you turn it off? Can you not be a cold-blooded killer? Is it such a big part of you that you feel the need to put on some kind of mask of civilization?"

Anderson looked on calm, but Keith could see the surprise in the small widening of his eyes.

"A few weeks ago, I told you that I didn't recognize you. I think I was seeing the real you, Anderson, and that scares me. I know I can't be with you, I can't even be friends with you, if that is who you are, if I've just been deceived by your nice guy persona who happens to do these terrible things."

He gathered the things he had accumulated since arriving and made for the door. He set a hand on the knob and turned back. "Maybe I'm wrong, but I really don't know if I can get past that, so. Thanks for saving my life."

"See ya around," Anderson said, and Keith fancied himself that he actually sounded a bit choked. He didn't allow himself to think about it.

He left the hospital and caught a cab to the nearest airport.


	11. An Yet Where We've Been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life, no matter how much we might wish, does not resemble _The Cosby Show_.

Sometimes, Anderson Cooper's life was like a movie. He was the protagonist, or maybe the anti-hero, and everyone else was supporting players, important only as they revolved through his life. Sometimes, he forgot that it wasn't.

After his daring rescue, movie-Anderson would have gotten Keith back. That was the way it was done: you break up before the action, you get back together after one person proves himself/almost dies/rescues you. Sometimes, he forgot that for everyone else it wasn't The Anderson Cooper Show. They had their own movies or dramas or sitcoms with their own set of supporting players and guest stars that flittered in and out and the poor saps who didn't even billing and got eaten the moment they beamed down to the new planet.

So, Anderson rescued Keith with some help from the CIA, made use of his health insurance, again, and had gone home. Alone.

"Cooper, you have managed something most Double-Os don't even dream of pursuing. But you seemed to have been unaware that with that relationship comes a degree of danger. I have no compunctions about sending a man out to die, I've done it before and I will do it again. You have something to come home to which would usually mean a degree of caution I don't normally see in my Double-Os. You lost that and I'm hoping this episode has reinforced that lesson," M had told him over the phone, her voice sympathetic but still unyielding.

Anderson was fairly certain the episode had changed him. Before, it was only his life on the line. Keith's kidnapping had given him the rude awakening that he was not alone in this anymore. Well, hadn't been alone. But his carelessness and lack of regard for his own life had certainly changed that.

He poured a drink, hating to be so melodramatic, but needing to be numb after a fantastically terrible day. The raunchy blues/hip-hop fusion album he put on matched his mood perfectly. He settled into an armchair and fixed an expectant look on James Bond.

"You know, it's much more fun sneaking in on people who actually react," he complained.

"I know you too well, now," Anderson told him. "I recognized your cologne by the sideboard." It wouldn't have been noticeable except that the particular scent he used was a perfect compliment to the smell of finely aged Scotch.

"I sometimes forget that you're good at your job," Bond joked.

"So, are you here to tell me that I'm off this particular case? Because if so, you could have just called."

"That part was a given," Bond said and Anderson knew it. The involvement of a civilian was an inexcusable breach, even if Anderson hadn't had much say in it. "The thing is, Cooper, you got in too deep. You became so entrenched in your need to be the best, to be right, that you forgot why you were doing this in the first place."

"I know," Anderson said. "I know I screwed up. I'm surprised M hasn't fired me."

"To be fair, you are good at your job. I've been in your position, loathe as I am to admit it. We are good at our jobs because of our obsessive natures, Anderson. It's not always a failing, but it can get us into trouble when we forget, as M likes to put it, to take our ego out of the equation. We're useless if we can't see past our own passion to the job. I don't think you slept with me because you were looking to forget or to get revenge. It's not part of your nature. You slipped up because, despite your feelings for Olbermann, your connected to me in a very real way. And you like having that connection."

In only a few simple words, Bond had managed to get to the heart of not only the problems with Keith and Anderson's relationship, but with Anderson himself. He had been running away from Keith, to his job, to Bond, because he and Keith had never found that understanding. They had ignored it, focusing on the good, focusing on the readily apparent problems.

"Now, I am not suggesting that you fall into my arms, now, but I am around for your entertainment," he added, eyes slyly amused.

It drew a reluctant smile from Anderson. "Good to know."

Bond sat up straighter then. "The mission, by the way, is at a stand still. Those we were able to apprehend in the attempted Indonesian coup got out easily enough and the trail is going cold. Those who we were keeping tabs on have disappeared--either dead or underground, though the way this group works I'd put my money on the former. Wurtland Riverport has been sold. We aren't sure about the warehouse where you were supposed to exchange yourself for Olbermann, but we can't find any kind of activity that would give us reason to get involved. We're back at square one."

Anderson thought about all the work they had put into this case since the discovery of Quantum and sighed. White had told them that Quantum was everywhere, had infiltrated every major organization, every major corporation. Guns for hire, red herrings, almost-innocent bystanders made up their ranks and they had little chance of finding the real bad guys.

"What about Westberg?" he asked. "He's still alive, right? He couldn't just disappear."

"Actually, he apparently can, he is one of the ones who have gone mysteriously missing." Bond stood then, gathered his coat from the back of the chair and made to leave. Anderson rose as well and followed him.

"James?" he asked, something that had been bothering him coming to mind.

"Hmm?"

"That's not your real name is it?"

Bond allowed himself a smirk. "It's my name. The only one I'll ever need."

*****

There was little Anderson could do about his frustration with the state of the case. M had taken him off it, Bond wasn't willing to say anything, and whatever developments there were weren't added to his weekly intelligence packet.

There had been little development on the Keith front either. He had come over to Anderson's while he wasn't there and picked up the few things he'd forgotten the first time around. He had left a note. A very short, very formal note.

_Anderson. Had to pick up a few things. Hope you don't mind. I left the key in your mailbox. Keith._

Anderson, in response, had gotten blindingly drunk.

"You are a sad, sad sight," Rachel announced when he opened up the door the following night. His hangover was verging on death and he hadn't bothered getting dressed.

"I'm aware," he rasped.

"How much did you drink?"

"Well, the emptiness of the bottle suggests... the whole bottle," he said staring balefully at the pricey vodka sitting on the counter.

"Quite an achievement," she told him, hefting up an 18 pack of beer. "Beer?"

He glared at her, but, as usual when it came to Rachel, she was unaffected. "Hair of the dog, Anderson, that is the only way, legally, you are going to kick this hangover."

She poured the beer in a glass and handed it over. Anderson sighed and took a large gulp of the drink. When it didn't immediately reappear, he relaxed and led his guest to the living room.

"So, you fucked up," Rachel said, succinctly. "And so did Keith. And now you're both miserable, I'm the only one who knows why, and things are very, very awkward."

"Can you cram complex issues into a nutshell or what?" he asked, rhetorically. He let out a gust of air and threw back a hefty portion of beer. "Keith and I... it might be worth salvaging, but I haven't the first clue how to go about it."

Rachel tapped her chin with the lip of her bottle and gave Anderson a penetrating look. "To be honest, Andy, I don't know what to do either. I'm trying to put myself in your shoes, or his shoes. At the heart of this we just have a personality clash, but it's complicated."

Anderson rolled his eyes and let his head fall onto the back of the sofa. "I don't know how to explain myself to him. I don't know whether I should _have_ to except that it's bothering him so much."

"It's bothering him and you want to be with him," Rachel clarified.

"Right." He took another deep swig. "I am who I am, Rachel. I can't change that. Even if I were to quit now, I couldn't change what I've done or the fact that I'm capable of it."

She stared at him, sympathy in her features. "Anderson, have you and Keith really talked about this? Like, knock-down drag out fight talked about it?"

"Not... not really. He talked. I did nothing."

"So, he's not heard this. He just thinks you're a heartless bastard that cheated on him."

"Apparently," he said. "Rachel, it's not as if... it's not pleasurable. I'm not a psychopath or a sociopath. But this is something I can do. It doesn't get any easier, not in the moral sense. It's easy to compartmentalize, to remain focused on the mission--"

"I'm not the one you need to be telling this to," Rachel interrupted.

"Yeah, but have you ever met anyone less willing to listen to another point of view?"

"Dick Cheney?"

"Too easy."

"Bill O'Reilly?"

"Still too easy."

"Whatever, the fact remains that it's not me that needs to hear this stuff, it's him."

"And how do I get him to listen?"

"You leave that to me."

*****

If everything were left to Rachel they would probably be drunkenly fumbling their way to sex at this very moment. Maybe she didn't think that alcohol solved all problems, but certainly she agreed that it was a potent social lubricant. All evidence to the contrary, Anderson wasn't a huge drinker. He didn't enjoy it the way others did. He recognized its uses, recognized the euphoria it could bring to certain people, but he could live without it. And he could say no.

Keith, it appeared, had decided that succumbing to Rachel's seductive cocktail prowess was the path of least resistance.

"Picked up any new boy toys? Seen _Bond_ recently?" he asked, slugging back the electric blue drink in front of him. Anderson, only on his second Manhattan, grimaced a little.

"I've already apologized for that, Keith, and you know perfectly well that that is not the root of our problems," Anderson said, hoping some of it got through.

"Right, our problem is your overdeveloped trigger-finger," Keith said.

"Unfair, I've used knives and occasionally my hands, before," he said lightly, anger like razors in his chest rising.

Keith stared at him incredulously, "This is your master plan for winning me back?"

"I'm not trying to win you back, Keith," Anderson said, truthfully. He had given up on that particular tack. However, that didn't mean that they didn't need to resolve the issues that had driven them to separation. If only because, in the past year, Anderson had begun to understand that he didn't want to deal with the knowledge that Keith might hate him. "But you need--_I_ need you to understand how I can do this."

Keith sat back, as though to distance himself from even the idea of Anderson's work. "Because you're one of the few who can, you told me."

"I told you-that is enough explanation _for me_, but I should have recognized that that wouldn't mean much to you. Keith, you go through life convinced that the world should be played out by a set of rules and that everyone should have to play by them or be thrown out of the game. It's not simplistic, but it is narrow. There are people in this world who can make a phone call and hours later have someone carry a bomb into an airport, completely unmolested. Those same people can buy and sell countries and leaders like we buy and sell stocks and bonds. Osama bin Laden was a name and a figure, but he wasn't nearly as bad as some of people I have had to deal with."

"You're still not explaining why _you_. Why can you do this? How can you do this? What is _wrong_ with you?" The question stung enough that Anderson had to gulp back the rest of his drink.

"I don't know, Keith. I don't know why I'm like this. I don't have the answers. I could give you some philosophical B.S. like 'why does anyone do what they do?' But it won't answer your question. I do this because I _have_ to do it, Keith. I'm not alone, others do it too, but it doesn't stop me... needing to do it, either."

"You need to do it," Keith repeated. He looked sad. "You can't just accept things and move on. You can't accept the way of the world."

"No," Anderson said, swallowing hard.

"You couldn't have just joined the Peace Corps?" Keith asked, startlingly a laugh out of Anderson. He buried his face in his hands, unable to stop laughing. Keith joined him.

In the background, they could hear the shaker rattling with exuberance.

*****

"I won't lie, Bond is a very attractive man," Keith admitted as they walked through Riverside park. They walked about a foot away from each other, hands stuffed in pockets. It wasn't quite cold enough for hats and gloves, but their breath made fog in front of them. It was awkward, trying to find if at least their friendship could survive. Anderson wasn't entirely certain they could be friends, they hadn't really ever made a sincere go of it. From forced collaboration to forced isolation they hadn't been given any chance to become friendly on their own terms.

"Attractive and pretty much an asshole," Anderson told him, sheepishly. "And not in the fun way."

Keith preened at that and Anderson allowed him to, it was true after all.

"And you were understandably frustrated," Keith said smugly.

"Without your manly self around? Of course," Anderson played along. Neither mentioned that the time Anderson had "gone without" was roughly equivalent to the amount of time _Keith_ went without. Absence versus biology.

"I said some terrible things," Keith said lowly, not looking at Anderson.

"I did some terrible things," Anderson reminded him. "We both screwed up."

"You think there's any going back?"

"Keith, I think that's the last place we wanna go," Anderson told him, cautious. "We both operated on a lot of assumptions and unspoken somethings, both separate and in relation to each other," he remembered how close he had been to rogue and had to feel a little frightened. All talk of cliffs and other precipices aside, Anderson had come into contact with a side of himself that was dangerous and thrilling.

"I'll concede that," Keith said, nodding. Anderson snorted, Keith was approaching the whole situation like a negotiation. Which, Anderson supposed, it kind of was.

The next few weeks, as Christmas and New Years passed with well wishes, but none of the shenanigans of the year before, were filled with coffee dates and invitations to eat crack pie. Keith attempted to explain basketball to Anderson, again--_"I mean, don't get me wrong, that zinger to Sarah Palin's rep was marvelous, but you should at least know what a foul is."_\--and Anderson had done his best to extol the virtues of Battlestar Galacatica--_"Seriously, Keith, it's right up your alley."_

And if, sometimes, Anderson had to go home and jerk-off after these meetings, well, that was entirely his own business these days.

*****

"So, apparently not having sex with you for the past few months has been really taxing on my libido, because I'm basically this close to just taking my pants off and hoping for the best," Keith said as Anderson opened the door. He had invited the other man over to watch a movie and eat junk. Apparently, Keith had other ideas.

"Um," was Anderson's intelligent response.

"So, I gotta know if such a course of action would be more likely to bring on police action or bedroom action," he continued.

"Uh," Anderson continued, with erudition.

"Basically, I'm saying we need to skip all the rest of the steps," Keith said, moving around the kitchen with ease. "We're friends, okay? We did the getting to know you, we've found that we don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but we knew that before. But we've also had a lot of fun together, or so my dick continually tells me and you know communication with him can be spotty."

Anderson snorted, his brain realigning with the conversation. "So, basically, you're ready to start again?"

"I'm more than ready, Anderson," he said, handing off a glass of wine. "And seeing that I was the one who broke us up I don't know why I'm the one about to get down on my knees to beg you, you should be begging me to fuck you at this point."

"Never let anyone tell you you're sensitive, Keith."

"Who would be that foolish?"


	12. Nobody Does it Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a man who leads a life of danger. To everyone he meets he stays a stranger. With every move he makes another chance he takes. Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow

"You know, the thought of you two back together does terrible things for my sanity," Jon said when Anderson and Keith made their announcement.

"Oh, please, Jon, who was it kvetching over the death of a relationship we'd all made such enormous bets on?" Rachel asked.

"And you! Actually scheming to get them back together!"

"So, I won't take part of the pot," she offered, magnanimously.

"When do you adopt your first street urchin?" Stephen asked, always cutting to the important issues.

"There will be no adopting of any kind any time soon," Keith said, sternly.

"Yeah, but see how long that lasts til those pleading blue eyes are looking up at you and offering you some little orphan in footie pajamas and soot on its nose asking for more porridge," Stephen said.

Anderson gave him a bemused look. "I sometimes wonder about your brain, Stephen."

"It really doesn't bear thinking about," Jon reassured him.

"I hear tell that you are a fan of _Battlestar Galactica_," Stephen said, chest puffed out.

"Yeah, I spent most of December catching up on the newest series." There was no mention of why he had so much time to do so.

"And?"

"Is _Caprica_ any good?"

Stephen lit up.

"No! Absolutely not. If we can't talk baseball, you all can't talk nerdy sci-fi shows," Keith said.

"Watch it, buster," Rachel warned. "They're not the only nerds at the table. I happen to know that Jon was given a practically working lightsaber when George Lucas came on the show."

Jon narrowed his eyes. "How did you know about that?"

"I have sources," she said airily.

"Anderson!" Jon accused.

"She threatened me!"

"With what? Her girl cooties?"

"She's dangerous, Jon, you wouldn't believe the kind of resources she's working with."

"Now, she's gonna want to play with it. You would never withstand torture, Anderson. They'd turn on the bright light and you'd be spilling your secrets."

Anderson exchanged a smile with Keith, "Oh, I don't know about that, Jon. I've managed to sit through Keith's show without flinching."

*****

Getting back together with Anderson had been on contingent on several things. For one, he had to resume his therapy. For two, he had to check in as often as possible. The third was a blowjob every week until his birthday. Anderson's that is. And that deal had been made in January.

Anderson had demands of his own, chief among them was that Keith had to deal with his innate repugnance with Anderson and who he was and what he did. If he couldn't get over that, if he couldn't accept that sometimes Anderson had to do some damn distasteful things and make decisions that no one really had the right to make, then there was no way this would work again.

Keith had been happy to take him back(beg for him back?), but he was too fucking old to waste his time or settle for anything less than what he wanted. Maybe thirty years ago he would have swooned and fallen into Anderson's arms upon his timely rescue, but then Anderson would have been about twelve and that was little... disgusting.

They didn't resume living together, recognizing that they had jumped too far and too deep into a relationship that needed strict attention and regulation. The rent in their relationship had not been born of misunderstandings, but of deep-seeded problems that needed to be dealt with before they could take on the more serious aspects again.

Anderson had left on a mission a few days and had checked in yesterday with _"In Mumbai. Bored as fuck. Love to you and the little girl."_

The little girl sat below him, chewing intently on a bone. Molly wasn't technically supposed to have one right now, but Keith was a sucker for whimpering and sad eyes. That explained a lot about him, actually, he thought with a snort.

He snapped the floppy newspaper, setting it against his knee as he tried to fill in the crossword. Every so often his eyes would flick up to BBC News. A four letter word for "word of exclusivity." He scribbled in "only" and glanced at the TV. Apparently there were riots on the Pakistani/Indian border. Young people it looked like. He went back to the crossword. Four letters, "all male party," writing in "stag" before looking back at the TV.

He almost turned back to the crossword, but something caught his eye and his head jerked back up. In the background, almost a bystander, but for the intent in his stride, was Anderson. No one else would have recognized him, his face mostly covered in an old-fashioned fedora and by the tilt of his head. But Keith knew the man inside out--almost literally, he recalled with a grimace--and it was most definitely him. As he passed the camera, his head came up slightly and the incline of his mouth, a half-smirk of mischief and confidence, cemented it. Keith laughed and rewound the broadcast, pausing on the image.

"You sly son of a bitch," he said to himself.

The image appeared to wink at him.

He smiled and looked back down at the crossword, laughing as he took in the next clue. Thirteen letters

"They've given him a number and taken away his name," he sang to himself before filling in: "secret agent man."


End file.
